Ourselves 

H.T.SHERINGHAM 




Class ^Aj 

Gopyriglit W. ___. 



COFmiGHT DEPOSIT. 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 



OURSELVES 
WHEN YOUNG 



J BY 

H^T/SHERINGHAM 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Ube KniclterbocKec press 

1922 



'PS'3 6'37 



Copyright, 1922 

by 

H. T. Sheringham 

Made in the United States of America 



^\^ 




©GI,A653671 



CONTENTS 



I.- 

II.- 

III.- 

IV.- 

V.- 

VI.- 

VII.- 

VIII.- 

IX. 

X. 

XL- 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 



■A Question for Father Christmas 


PAGB 

3 


-The Fairies 


II 


-Night Watches .... 


24 


-Concerning Another Little Girl 


34 


-Dinners and Diners 


47 


-A Poor Effort .... 


64 


-The Collector's Progress . 


74 


-Flotsam and Jetsam 


92 


-The Bay of Delights . 


108 


-From a Diary of Travel 


129 


-In the Atelier Furlong 


135 


-Principalities and Powers . 


142 


-Bread and Circuses 


158 


-The Scavengers .... 


174 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XV. — Private Fishery . . . .188 

XVI. — Parts of Speech .... 200 

XVII. — In Praise of Pennies . . .211 

XVIII.— The Last Word . . . .221 

XIX. — Life and Letters .... 232 



VI 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 



A QUESTION FOR FATHER CHRISTMAS 

/TEM, a pink china rabbit minus one ear. 
Guy has weighed in with his list compla- 
cently. Nemesis, in the shape of Father 
Christmas's displeasure, is not going to over- 
take him to any overwhelming extent if a fair- 
seeming record can evade it. You are to know 
that this year Father Christmas is in the move- 
ment. He controls. He rations. He tears 
off half -coupons and whole coupons according 
as our misdeeds have been minor or major. 
The ear of a pink china rabbit signifies a half- 
coupon, since we did not mean to break; we 
sought only the gratification of the sense of 
touch, the same being unlawful but not so bad 
as the will-to-destroy. That, as we know 
quite well, is a not-English desire, a Hunnish 

3 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

propensity in fact. And when possible we try 
to remember that we know it. 

The trouble is that we cannot all remember 
all the time, and so this sorrowful business 
of casting up accoimts against Father Christ- 
mas's coming, which, as some allege, is to be 
by aeroplane and so through the skylight. 
The question is how the ration books stand in 
face of a number of sad memorials which 
surround us. 

Guy has acknowledged the rabbit's ear, but 
beyond that his conscience is obviously whole. 
"I expect I shan't get a coat for my Teddy," 
he meditates, assigning to the half -coupon its 
equivalent in present- value. "Isn't it lucky 
you made me that other coat for him ? ' ' Fond 
maternity sometimes fails in prescience, or else 
Penalty of the limping foot lags behind out of 
sight. But it was absolutely essential for 
Teddy to have some fresh covering. He is 
pre-war and has taken life hardly. There are 
anatomical pictures showing Homo sapiens 
without his skin. Teddy is like that. 

4 



A QUESTION FOR FATHER CHRISTMAS 

"Penny won't have many coupons left," 
says Guy, turning once more to the main 
enquiry. "I haven't bwoke nothing," Pene- 
lope responds firmly. "What about the pig 
book what you threw into the fire?" On this 
matter her mind is quite easy. "It wasn't 
bwoke, and anyhow it was only a book.'' This 
is accepted as soimd reasoning, but the pig- 
book is apparently only the end link in a chain. 
There are other matters to be accoimted for, 
such as the little table, the lid of the big toy- 
box, the plate which had "Baby" on it in 
brave blue letters, the doll which is called Jane 
even without a head (it is the head that is in 
question), the green cat which purported to be 
tin but dissolved into atoms when it jumped 
from shelf to floor, Herbert who formerly had 
two arms, two legs, and four faces, but now 
has nothing but his unconquerable soul — all 
these and more are to be dragged to light, dis- 
cussed, and "blamed onto" the proper party. 
Otherwise who shall say what dire injustice 
may not be done to people's ration books? 

5 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Penelope maintains her point of view 
stoutly. She is not even to be manoeuvred 
into a false position by subtlety. It is doubt- 
less true that very young persons may be 
excused lapses which would have caused it to 
go hardly with their elders, but that is an aca- 
demic issue, "juist havers," what you will. 
"I'm not a little girl, I'm free, and — and 
Poggin done it." The ingenuity of the female 
is much to be admired. Here is a raft fit to 
navigate a sea of troubles. For Poggin has 
nothing to say for himself. He is inarticulate. 
He goes by default. The very breadth of his 
smile on the round world as he safely achieves 
a journey from the armchair to the side of the 
pen, a full yard, betokens impenitence. But 
see how Fate trips up the evil-doer. That 
wailing is not, as some might think, the result 
of thwarted ambition to perambulate from pen 
to table or of a head soundly bumped on the 
floor, but of a sudden consciousness of a sinful 
past and a couponless future. Let him wail. 

And so a comprehensive list is composed 
6 



A QUESTION FOR FATHER CHRISTMAS 

that Poggin may fully ptirge his offences. 
This he tore asunder, that he rent in twain. 
On the one he sat, over the other he rolled. 
Mark how he placed his massive though 
uncertain foot on the "hair-slide" which was 
wont to restrain the handful of tow which 
Penelope calls her hair. Where is that hair- 
slide now? Behold that tattered piece of 
wall, and hear how Poggin pulled off the paper 
in wanton strips. Observe yon blind-cord 
torn from its socket while, as is averred, the 
righteous slept their noon sleep. Put your 
head out of the window — you can get one eye 
just over the lower bar by nice adjustment — 
and survey the conservatory roof, how one 
pane is star-spangled, and one all holes and 
splinters. Who but Poggin should have cast 
Mr. Equal out so that he jumped, and slid, 
and jimiped, and finally crashed through, 
coming to rest all standing on the stone floor 
like the lead-balanced wooden image that 
he is? 

By this time Poggin has been restored to an 
7 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

upright position and comforted and he once 
more beams on his surroimdings. It is clear 
that the question of coupons does not weigh 
with him very heavily. And anyway it is not 
proved that he committed all the deeds of 
violence imputed to him. It is possible that 
he may have eaten the missing portion of 
Penelope's left red shoe. He has certainly 
been found in the act of swallowing a not- 
English stamp, one of the gems of Guy's 
collection. The right eye of Ursus Major has 
perhaps gone the way of other small missing 
things — it is fortunate that Poggin has a good 
digestion. 

But, as one sensible person to another, will 
Guy assert that Poggin can have had a hand, 
in, for instance, the unfortunate affair of the 
mangle? Will Penelope lay hej hand on her 
heart and testify that Poggin, as an example, 
kicked the paint off the dining-room door what 
time he clamoured for admission and could not 
cope with the handle? These be searching 
questions, for we all know qmte well that such 

8 



A QUESTION FOR FATHER CHRISTMAS 

doings are beyond Poggin's capacity. But 
somebody must have been responsible for them. 
At this point Guy looks up with his inspired 
expression. Another way out has been most 
fortunately indicated. All these later things 
must be put on the schedule to be entitled 
"What Somebody broke." Who Somebody _ 
may be we cannot tell. There are mysteries 
that are not to be explored. 

Unhappily the inexorable Memory which 
rules us all and tells us things for our good 
rakes together another schedulefiil of items. 
Eyes grow round at the thought of the busy 
season we have had. The handle of the bu- 
reau, the round bowl which had snails and 
sticklebacks in it, the little brass man who used 
to go shooting daily on the dining-room book- 
case till his gun was removed, the yard- 
measure that shut itself up with a suddenness 
which gave you delightful jumps till it received 
some hiu*t to its inside — here are some of them, 
awaiting the favour of your kind attention. 
Guy is equal to the occasion, however. He 

9 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

meets it with a bold antithesis. This schedule 
contains, of course, the things "What Nobody 
broke." It is apparent that Nobody (usually 
dignified with the prefix of Mr.) in a manner 
of speaking cuts both ways. He has come in 
very usefully in the past as a sort of scavenger, 
removing, for instance, a box containing a 
toad and two worms from the store-room, and 
otherwise undoing the achievements of hard- 
working people. We must all, old and young 
alike, have a case of Mr. Nobody. 

And even now the record of the late crowded 
months is not quite complete. At this point, 
however, Penelope intervenes with what in 
anything a few sizes larger might well be con- 
sidered brusqueness. Perhaps there may have 
been other things, but if there have been they 
are "Things what bwoke theirselves." 

So now we have the enquiry finished. But 
how Father Christmas will adjust it all it is 
hard to say. 



10 



II 

THE FAIRIES 

PENELOPE has seen a dead fairy. At 
least Penelope says she has seen a dead 
fairy. It is a dank November day, with mists 
blanketing the river valley and a dropping of 
constant tears from the now leafless trees, 
quite the sort of day on which you might 
expect to find some poor little fairy who has 
passed away after a severe attack of what we 
call "interender." That is, of course, pro- 
vided that fairies get the influenza, and having 
got it are o'erswayed by sad mortality. As 
to that we are bound to have our doubts. 
Guy contests the idea: "Fairies don't die. I 
expect it was a mouse you saw. Or a frog." 
We do not get much more light on the inci- 
dent because Penelope is not concerned to 
uphold her statement. She will not even say 
where she saw it, much less what it looked like. 

II 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

That is nearly always the way with really 
interesting things ; you get a hint, an impres- 
sion, and no more. If we believed that Pene- 
lope believed that it was a right fairy, we 
should ask her why she did not pick it up and 
bring it home. There should have been 
worthy obsequies, and the finest thing obtain- 
able about the garden for a headstone. But 
we do not believe. We are only just so much 
impressed by her statement as to feel unsettled 
in our minds. Which causes us, on further 
consideration, to be annoyed with Penelope, 
who has no right to preach this atheism. 

Let us, to restore the balance of things, 
narrate the history of Penelope's great dis- 
comfiture at the hands of the little folk, which 
befell during the past summer, she being then 
two years and nine months and therefore fully 
able to appreciate the significance of what 
happened. We had gone for a Big Picnic. 
There are picnics of two sizes, and the little, 
though delightful, are not so wonderful as the 
big. The water is only up to your ankles, 

12 



THE FAIRIES 

and it has nothing in it bigger than stickle- 
backs. Besides it is not really in distant 
country. Cross the lawn and one field and 
there you are. 

But for the big picnic you go all the way 
along the water-walk, and have to pass the 
field where the three bulls are, a thrilling 
business in itself (although they be young as 
it is said, bulls are bulls, and we are not very 
old ourselves) . After that there is a stile to be 
got over, baskets and all, and then there is the 
long flight of wooden steps up to the road, 
which rises rapidly because it crosses the rail- 
way. With a bit of luck a train may go under 
the bridge just at the right time. This adds 
variety to the afternoon. If you cannot get 
lifted up so as to look over, you have to poke 
your head through the fence at the side. Pog- 
gin, by the way, usually meets the procession 
at this point taking carriage exercise. His 
vehicle cannot go over stiles and up steps. 

Down hill from the railway bridge you 
would come to the river bridge in a few yards, 

13 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

but instead you turn sharp to the right and 
make for the mill, a wondrous place which has 
grown up in a night, so to speak. Only last 
year it was a ruin, with great holes in the 
floor and roaring water to be seen through. 
An army of men came with bricks and mortar 
and hammers and shouts and mended the mill. 
Now it has grown into a big timber yard into 
which tall trees come and out of which long 
planks go. The trains come and fetch them 
away to the war. 

But we do not stop long to look at these 
things. We go along in front of the mill and 
then cross a field to the picnic tree, which is 
thehugest willow that ever was and had a wild 
bees' nest in it last year. The nest is not there 
this year, but it is always worth while looking 
about to see if they dropped any honey. You 
never know your luck. Guy found a leaf with 
something on it that was distinctly sticky, 
and which would almost certainly have been 
honey if it had been sweet. 

The chief thing about the picnic tree, how- 
14 



THE FAIRIES 

ever, is that it is at the edge of the river, just 
where the big weirpool shallows and runs 
over gravel banks to the weedy deeps below. 
With the sun, and the foam, the noise of the 
water and the nice cool weedy smell mixed 
with the wild thyme and the water mint, this is 
the place of all others for a Jvily afternoon. 
The programme of a big picnic is as follows. 

(i) We put on our bathing dresses and we 
go boldly into the sparkling water up to our 
waists. There is a pool thoughtfully provided 
for this purpose by a side channel of the river 
which has worn a way close under our own 
bank. 

The reasons why we do not go in above our 
waists are two. The first, that we "do not 
mind the deepness but we don't like the cold- 
ness." The second, that we have a care since 
the day when Penelope tripped over a stone 
and lay prone on the bottom looking like an 
agitated red fish. That was an experience to 
make one think. Some day, of course, we 
shall give our minds to it and master the art of 

15 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

swimming, but there is no time for that just 
at present. 

(2) We dry ourselves and resume our or- 
dinary costimies. 

(3) We take our collation, which is dis- 
posed on a seemly white cloth, round which 
the company is grouped on rugs. Poggin has 
a rug to himself in the middle distance, his 
table manners being hearty rather than 
distinguished. 

We eat bread and butter, bread and jam, 
cake, raspberries. We drink according to 
our humour, tea out of a thermos flask, milk 
out of bottles. We eat and drink all that is 
provided and then 

(4) We tiu"n to the business of amusing our- 
selves. This varies with inclination. There 
may be paddling, honey-hunting, stick-sailing, 
pebble-throwing, or what not. 

On the occasion imder review the pro- 
gramme was a visit to the island, a noble tract 
of sand and shingle set beyond the bathing 
stream and on the hither side of the main 

16 



THE FAIRIES 

stream which races along under the distant 
willow roots, and out of which big silver fishes 
jump at dancing gnats. The island is 
obviously full of treasures. There are little 
pools, and things which gleam in the sun. 
Who shall say that the water fairies do not 
come and dance there when the moon is full 
and the golden gravel is tiu-ned to silver? It 
is a very likely place indeed for such a thing. 

To get to the island the interposition of a 
fairly tall Providence is necessary, because 
of the deepness. Himian natiu'e draws a line 
at the waist, as before observed. But with 
help active people can be swung across, for the 
distance is not great. Well, we were awaiting 
the fulfilment of the programme, when Pene- 
lope most unwisely sat down by the bubbling 
water and placed one shoe in it. She was 
solemnly warned that if she was such a 
naughty little girl while the baskets were being 
packed the water fairies would be very cross 
indeed. 

Penelope dared the fairies to come on. She 
17 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

said "Pooh" to the fairies. And she placed 
the other shoe in the bubbling water. 

Thereupon, as though some wizard had 
smitten with his staff (and indeed there was a 
mysterious figure to be seen by the floodgates 
at the head of the weirpool, had anyone been 
looking), there was a mighty roaring of water, 
and the river began to mount up and up. 
Faster and faster it came and the island 
gradually vanished before our ever-widening 
eyes. Presently it was clean gone, and not a 
trace of it could be seen in all that seething 
waste. 

We went home sadder but wiser, and have 
had a wholesome respect for the opinion of the 
water fairies ever since. 

Besides Penelope's alleged fairy the only 
other manifestation of the kind for which we 
can vouch was seen by Albert. He was 
cleaning boots at the time and whistling the 
Brabangonne (Albert came over from Belgium 
at the beginning of the war with his family, 
and daily expects to return), when he 

i8 



THE FAIRIES 

happened to look up, as he tells Guy, and saw 
a pale blue fairy emerging from the kitchen 
chimney. The fairy became mistier and 
mistier and vanished (like smoke, Albert says), 
and nothing came of the incident, but it was 
doubtless one of the tribe that does things in 
the chimneys. 

These are fire-fairies, and they are respon- 
sible for the glow of red-hot coals, and especi- 
ally for the little tongues of green or blue 
flame which take our eye so mightily. If you 
repent properly, they will not only forgive 
you, but even make things better than before 
sometimes. When Penelope threw Poggin's 
fluffy duck into the fire the fairies returned it 
"as new" on the morrow, and it was parti- 
cularly noticeable that they had given it a 
serviceable pair of yellow feet. But of course 
there had been an interlude of sackcloth and 
ashes when we ate our bread with tears. 

If you do not repent, or if you wear a proud 
look and a high stomach, the fire-fairies can 
punish. One of them lives in the bright part 

19 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

of the tall coffee-pot and bums you smartly 
if you lay a hand on the dazzling svirface. We 
learnt that ages ago. When we had very few 
words indeed we were always able to apostro- 
phise the coffee-pot. We said ' ' Hot !" to it in 
tones of reverent awe. 

How far you can propitiate the fire-fairies 
in advance is not known. Guy was found 
with his right arm and shoulder quite black 
the other day. It appeared that he had been 
making an offering up the night-nursery chim- 
ney. He refused to say what it was all about, 
but it must have been pretty serious because 
the thing offered w^as nothing less than Pog- 
gin's outworn tooth-brush. We had all had 
our eyes expectantly on that for some time. 
It had a clear amber handle like jujubes. So 
you can understand that it would not be 
sacrificed lightly. We conjecture that it was 
hush-money. 

None of the house fairies, which are the most 
important kind, can bring large parcels, so it 
is no good expecting them to. Could they if 

20 



THE FAIRIES 

they all pushed together? No. The proper 
time for large parcels is when Father Christ- 
raas goes his rounds, or on a birthday when the 
postman or the carrier attends to the matter. 
If you find some trace of the fairies on your 
pillow or tied to the bars of your cot on an 
ordinary morning it won't be bigger than two 
chocolates, or a doll's shoes, or something 
like that. They are rather good at finding 
and bringing a foreign stamp from time to 
time. Altogether they are decidedly useful in 
a quiet imostentatious way, and it is well worth 
while being on good terms with them. 

Guy thought he saw one once, but afterwards 
he thought it must have been a moonbeam 
that came in through a crack in the curtains. 
That was when a careful search in the morn- 
ing failed to produce even so much as a small 
chocolate drop. It is a well-known fact that 
though the fairies' hands are small they are 
never empty like that. 

The air fairies live with Mother Goose. 
Then there are some wood fairies in the 

21 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

kitchen garden, probably in the top of the nut 
trees where it is thick and leafy and you can't 
see. At night they go into the apple trees and 
paint the applies red. Their paint pots are 
very tiny, which is why they can hardly ever 
paint an apple all over. This year, as we all 
know, there has been no red paint obtainable 
because of the war. So there haven't been 
any red apples either, or strawberries. The 
fairies had so little to do that one night they 
went to the onion bed and knocked all the 
onions over on their sides, a very funny thing 
to see afterwards. And another night they 
took away all the green gages. Albert thinks 
so, anyhow, and he should know. Perhaps 
the greengages wouldn't have been any good 
because they were suffering from what is called 
"Fingerblight." All the fruit had it, but not 
the cabbages. 

Penelope went out one day to see the 
Fingerblight which she'd heard so much about. 
(It was the same spirit of enquiry which once 
led Guy to demand a visit to the whooping 

22 



THE FAIRIES 

cough, then much discussed) . But she came 
in disappointed. She had seen nothing but 
Albert weeding. 

The more we think of it the more convinced 
we are that Penelope's dead fairy is a pure 
invention. She has "had it in for" the fairies 
ever since the Big Picnic, and she would like 
to see one dead. A water one, anyhow. 
That's what it is. It is not thought that water 
fairies bring any presents. They only splash 
rain against the window. 



23 



in 

NIGHT WATCHES 

In winter I get up at night 
And dress by yellow candle-light. 
In summer, quite the other way, 
I have to go to bed by day. 

I have to go to bed and see 
The birds still hopping on the tree, 
Or hear the grown-up people's feet 
Still going past me in the street. 

And does it not seem hard to you. 
When all the sky is clear and blue. 
And T should like so much to play, 
To have to go to bed by day? 

THE name of this poem is not really that 
which Stevenson gave to it, it is "Ode to 
the new Act." For it was the new Act which 
aggravated the situation so much that bed- 
time may be said almost to come in the morn- 
ing. The new Act came about just when Guy 
was old enough to appreciate this inconven- 

24 



NIGHT WATCHES 

ience, and he was siifficiently impressed by it 
to consent to a first lesson in English literature. 
His rendering lacked something in articulation. 
His birds, for instance, were always "hopping 
top on tree," and he ignored all such trifles 
as "the" or "and." But there was no doubt 
as to the heartiness with which he endorsed 
the note of complaint which runs through the 
poem. 

In due course Penelope joined her voice to 
Guy's, and now we have quite a deputation, 
for Poggin is just as convinced as anybody. 
He expresses his sentiments at 5 p.m., Pene- 
lope follows with a few well-chosen words at 
5.30, and Guy addresses the Chair eloquently 
at six. 

The Chair, after the manner of Chairs, is 
sympathetic but non-committal. While it is 
greatly to be regretted that there is no immedi- 
ate prospect of anything being done to remedy 
what is undoubtedly a difficult and in some 
ways perhaps a grievous state of affairs, the 
Chair is not without hope, certainly not with- 

25 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

out hope, that at some future date it may be 
possible to recommend some relaxation in the 
hours of — ahem ! — closing. The speakers who 
have so cogently — ^if the Chair may be per- 
mitted to say so — ^put forward what is 
admittedly a point of view shared by no small 
part of the people of these Islands, can rest 
assured that they have been heard with the 
utmost sympathy. They may be sure. . . . 
And so on. 

But it never makes any difference of course. 
When did deputations ever alter the course of 
events? No one knows better than Chairs 
that the surest way to draw the poison out of a 
movement is to invite it to surrender its fangs 
at a deputation. Everybody is reported in 
the Press. The leader writers spread them- 
selves in such phrases as " It is time that action 
was taken" or "the Public will not tolerate 
any further delay," and on the third day the 
movement is dead. New movements may 
follow as successive waves come on the heels 
of the first, but like the waves they fall to 

26 



NIGHT WATCHES 

pieces with a little noise and babblement. 
Chairs know their business. 

Great reforms cannot come about with strict 
observance of tradition, set programmes, and 
votes of thanks. You must spring a surprise 
on the people. Encourage the public to make 
its plans for the Christmas holiday, prepare 
special trains in abimdance, get the cabs piled 
high with luggage, and have the engines whis- 
tling with impatience in the stations — then 
begin a railway strike. You will surprise every- 
one very much and reforms are sure to follow. 
Either you will reform the public or the public 
will turn to and reform you — ^for that also is 
possible. You have to risk something. 

It was presumably in this spirit that Poggin 
began to champion the general cause by sur- 
prise tactics. Precisely at 11.15 p.m. on 
Bulgaria night he went berserk. He rose 
in his cot, shouted defiance, sang wordless 
paeans, brandished his fists, and even leaped 
inches into the air, till the laws of gravity 
asserted themselves and he fell on his head. 

27 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Nothing daunted, he reared himself up again 
and began afresh. The clamour of it all 
attracted attention and soon he was the centre 
of an interested audience, part of which had 
put away sleep in order to admire, or laugh, as 
the case might be. 

This was all very well as an isolated cele- 
bration, but when Poggin repeated the per- 
formance on the next night, on the night after, 
every night for a week, it was felt that his zeal 
outran the merits of his case. The Public, or 
so much of it as was affected, turned to and 
quelled this Bolshevist outbreak. The method 
was simple. The night-light, which had 
hitherto tempered the darkness with its mild 
radiance, was quenched. Poggin, it is 
reported, woke himself up at the scheduled 
hour on the eighth night, but was without any 
means of verifying the position or of taking 
his bearings. He mxirmured awhile in a dis- 
satisfied manner and so fell on sleep. Thus 
another nuisance was abated. 

Oblivion, says the good Sir Thomas, is not 
28 



NIGHT WATCHES 

to be hired, and small things will sometimes 
interfere with that soft dropping away into 
forgetfulness and dreams which comes when 
the Dustman has touched tired eyes. For 
instance, if one's stable companions of the 
moment have been mislaid or forgotten, it is 
quite impossible to clear the mind of mundane 
things. The order of events should be: — 

1 . Disposal of effects within handy reach, 
that is to say, Teddy's head on the right 
comer of the pillow, and the latest thing in 
cigarette cards or stamps under the pillow on 
the left side. 

2. Prayers, which can then be offered 
without reservations. 

3. Tucking-up, and immediately after 
sleep. 

Sometimes, by malign accident, things are 
disarranged. Thus on a recent evening Pene- 
lope, thinking that all was well, had said her 
prayers with imction, and was tucked-up and 
done for, when she suddenly realised that all 
was very far from well. The new fluffy duck 

29 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

was not in its proper place. "I want my 
duck," she complained, untucking herself 
with an indignant heave of the shoulder. 

An untucked child tries the temper. "If 
you say another word," came the firm reply, 
"after your prayers too, you shan't have your 
duck." Then was Penelope placed in a 
hideous dilemma. Search was to be made for 
the duck in the day nursery, but as a matter of 
fact it was not there. The inevitable result 
would be a report that it could not be fotind 
and therefore must be foregone. If, on the 
other hand, information were to be given as 
to where the creature really was, that would 
almost certainly constitute "another word." 
And so Penelope stood to lose either way. 
Besides too much insistence might recall the 
fact that it was not her duck at all, but Pog- 
gin's, which had merely been adopted. She 
struggled with an impulse to speak for a little 
while, with a piteous opening and shutting of 
the mouth, and at last out it came all in a rush 
— "Duck's-in-here." Perhaps a very short 

30 



NIGHT WATCHES 

quick exclamation of that sort would pass as a 
cough or a sneeze and yet do what was wanted. 
For the satisfaction of the compassionate it 
may be recorded that Penelope got the duck. 

Occasionally something that is not wholly 
material upsets the serenity of an evening. 
From the night-nursery came certain noises 
that heralded the storm, and presently the 
storm itself broke in a great volume of sound. 
Both Guy and Penelope were demonstrating 
some serious trouble to the very limit of their 
capacity. A rescue party was organised 
immediately, for it was plain that something 
out of the common had occurred. The door 
was opened, but everything seemed much as 
usual except for the sighs and sobs from the 
two cots. "What on earth is the matter? " was 
the natural enquiry . * ' The curtain is crooked , ' ' 
complained Guy in an agonised voice. "We 
can't go to sleep with it crooked." 

The remedy was soon applied, but to this 
day it remains a mystery why the fact that a 
piece of drapery was not quite truly aligned 

31 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

should have had such an effect on people to 
whom disorder is, in the ordinary run of things, 
a great part of enjoyment. Perhaps it is an 
earnest of better times in store. 

As a rule the night has no particular terrors 
for any of us, since it is peopled with fairies 
and angels of beneficent disposition, and we 
have no acquaintance with the Darker Powers 
as yet — long may they be kept from 
troubling us. Still there are occasionally 
sudden wakings and vague apprehensions. 
One night the voice of Guy came echoing 
through the half-open door and down the 
passage. "We're frightened," it annotmced 
in a matter-of-fact sort of way. The state- 
ment was repeated indignantly. Then there 
was silence for a while. 

Presently Guy sought confirmation. 
"Penny," he called, "we're frightened, aren't 
we?" No answer. "Penny, wake up! 
Aren't we frightened? Wake up, Penny! 
Aren't we?" A very sleepy voice — ^it was 
easy to imagine one eye half -opened — assented 

32 



NIGHT WATCHES 

to the proposition, "Ye-es, Guy." The up- 
shot of this scene was two small figures in red 
dressing-gowns seated on a sofa, and a sound of 
munched biscuits, with fotu- very round eyes 
excitedly appreciating the adventure of being 
abroad in the Middle of the Night. 

Happily this sort of adventure cannot grow 
into a habit, for sleep makes heavy demands 
on us as a rule. We cannot even keep awake 
to watch for fairies when gifts are in prospect. 

But we make up for it in the morning, and 
the fairies can hardly have got off the premises 
before we are embarked on the business of 
another day. Often we prevent Chanticleer 
himself with our affairs and in the wee hours 
this sort of thing may be heard: 

"You get off my bed and I'll give you your 
doll." 

"You give me my doll and I'll get off your 
bed." 

To have to adjudicate in a deadlock of this 
sort at 5 a.m. is hard on the Powers that Wish 
they Weren't. 

3 33 



IV 

CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

FROM time to time Another Little Girl 
crops up in our annals, sometimes as an 
illustration, sometimes as a warning, less often 
— ^by reason of the paucity of evidence — as an 
example. You cannot do much in the way 
of pattern-making with a little girl who at the 
age of three left the house in a nice woolly 
muffler, provided by kind parents as a pro- 
tection against the cold, and without saying 
a word to anyone tied it round a large stone 
and cast it into the Norfolk Broads, where for 
all that is known it remains to this day. 
There is another muffler somewhere in the 
North Sea, and a third inside a certain park 
wall — ^provided that mufflers last a good long 
time in difficult conditions. Anyhow it 
needed three good mufflers to convince the 
Powers that Used to Be of Another Little 

34 



CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

Girl's impatience with more than a modicum 
of raiment. 

Obviously it would not do to tell Penelope 
things of this sort. Mufflers have gone out of 
fashion, but there are other complications 
which might suggest rivalry. What man has 
done, man, and still more woman, can do. 
The business of "fielding" shoes, jerseys, and 
other things which are hurtling towards the 
well-filled bath becomes, it is asserted, almost 
monotonous on some evenings. We have no 
North Sea near us, so we should not have to 
patrol that, but there is a river of sufficient 
volimie to absorb the whole of Penelope's 
wardrobe without leaving a trace. 

It is to be noted that the young female is not 
always provided with the clothes instinct as 
one might suppose. Both Penelope and the 
Other Little Girl of history are strangely 
indifferent to clothes at certain times. A 
frock is chiefly esteemed because the ampli- 
tude of its skirt (we do not care for the modem 
ballet-dancer's mode) enables the conveyance 

35 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

of a bigger load of gravel, stones, mud, or what 
not than could be managed in the hands. 
Sleeves are foimd most becoming when they 
are used as a protection to the arms dur- 
ing dabbling. There is also perhaps a cer- 
tain devil-may-carefulness about thoroughly 
soaked raiment which makes its appeal. 

It is within memory how the Other Little 
Girl at a somewhat later period (she was then 
tinned four) had laid plans for bathing in the 
aforesaid North Sea on the occasion of a family 
picnic. Owing, however, to grey skies and a 
shrewd air on the appointed day, the Powers 
that Used to Be put their foot down and said 
No. And when they were all busy with the 
hamper and the tea-kettle the Other Little 
Girl stepped briskly off into the waves with all 
her clothes on. 

Later, when retrieved and admonished, she 
was led off for punishment to the only building 
that was to be foimd on all that lonely coast, 
the lighthouse. Therein while her clothes 
were drying she should sit tea-less and medi- 

36 



CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

tate on her sins what time other well-behaved 
folks feasted among the dunes. It is sad how 
plans miscarry. An hour or more afterwards 
the criminal was sought out. Robed in a 
blanket, she was seated in the chair of honour 
consuming her eighth slice of bread and home- 
made strawberry jam, and conversing affably 
with a misguided lighthouse keeper's wife. 
Never had an afternoon been more happily 
spent. Hardly anyone in the world has eaten 
eight slices of bread and strawberry jam in a 
lighthouse. 

Penelope, of course, knows nothing about 
this incident. 

The other morning after breakfast the world 
was startled by the appearance of Penelope 
very debonair in neglig6. One not more than 
adequate garment completed her attire, 
though when last seen she had a full comple- 
ment of shoes and other things. The 
explanation seemed to be that she had found 
herself with a few minutes to spare. The 
irony of the situation was that though 

37 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Penelope can undress herself, she is not yet 
able to reverse the process. So someone's 
work was to do all over again. 

This was in December and Penelope knows 
nothing of the occasion when the Other Little 
Girl found a primrose and a gleam of sun and 
said to herself, "It is vSpring." Penelope has 
never heard how the Other Little Girl tore off 
her hat and threw it into the mud, caused her 
coat to follow the hat, and then added so much 
of her clothing as could readily be removed 
to the heap. Penelope's mental vision holds 
no picture of the Other Little Girl dancing a 
springtime dance among the ruins, with her 
eye on the primrose, and the sunbeam on her 
curly hair. 

Penelope has been told nothing of this. 

But we wonder what she will be doing by the 

Spring if December has so much effect. What 

says the poet? 

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring 
The Winter -garment of Repentance fling. 

Fire is even better than mud, perhaps. 

38 



CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

Little girls, you may say, are all very much 
alike, but that we have found not to be the 
case. Take, for instance, Camilla, who, with 
her faithful doll Circe, paid us a visit in the 
summer. Camilla was a small exquisite. She 
would dress for nursery tea if she had her way. 
A spot of mud on her frock would fill her with 
consternation, and nothing would do but a 
complete change (Circe, it must be owned, was 
less particular). It was unfortunate that the 
ploy of the period was "being at the seaside." 
To do this properly you have to bring your sea 
with you. The shore is already provided in a 
sand heap between the cauliflower tree and the 
field. The sea is conveyed in an old baitcan, 
a broken vegetable dish, and other receptacles. 
It is generally mixed with its shore and people 
soon become brown all over. Camilla got 
used to being brown in time, but she never 
really recovered her self-respect till she 
appeared in her velvet dress in the afternoon, 
and was able to show her young friends what 
could be done if one tried. 

39 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Youth, by the way, is a time of rather nice 
distinctions, but if you make the most of them 
a good deal can be estabhshed. Guy was 
inclined occasionally to overlook the three 
months that separated himself and the lady. 
"Well," she would say, "you're only four. / 
shall be six next birthday." He knew that 
there was a retort somewhere, but he could 
never find it in words. The best he could do 
was to try and make Camilla browner than 
before. After a while even this lost much of 
its sting, while Guy still remained four and 
Camilla never varied from being six next 
birthday. The position is really imassailable 
for a long time to come if properly maintained. 

Camilla's velvet dress is said to have 
precipitated a grave misf orttme. There was a 
tea-party at the Mill and brave doings were 
projected among the ducks and chickens, 
about, perhaps in, the water, with possibly a 
cruise in the boat. Everybody was, of course, 
much excited about the prospect. And then 
Camilla came out with a most surprising peti- 

40 



CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

tion to Providence. "Oh, I do hope it will be 
cold and wet," she sighed, "then I can wear 
my velvet dress. ' ' And it was cold and wet, so 
of course Camilla was credited with having ill- 
wished the function. There was a good deal 
of feeling about it. People refused to admire 
Camilla, and even told her that the velvet 
dress was "simply howwid." Altogether an 
unfortunate affair. 

Neither Penelope nor the Other Little Girl 
would have uttered Camilla's petition for 
Camilla's reason. A desire for a cold wet day 
— that would be conceivable. But the motive 
would have been mud or puddles, or both. 
The velvet dress, if considered at all, would 
have been merely accessory to the mud or 
puddles, by whose aid it could be made to look 
thoroughly foolish. So little girls are not all 
very much alike. 

The friendly warning has its place in our 
economy, as in that of all well-ordered com- 
munities. Used with discretion it is at times 
effective in averting catastrophes. Penelope, 

41 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

for instance, is at this moment very imsettled 
in her mind about the wisdom of sucking one's 
thumb, whereas not so very long ago she had 
no doubt that it was the proper as well as the 
pleasant thing to do. The change is not 
wholly due to "bit of aloe," which can be 
thrown out of windows (and is), but in large 
part to the lesson inculcated by that excellent 
work, Shock-Headed Peter, which is explicit 
on the subject of thimab-sucking. Intensive 
study of the misadventures of Conrad has 
impressed all our minds. 

Only the other day Penelope entered by the 
garden door in haste and agitation proclaiming 
that "nobody hadn't done nothing," and she 
straightway vanished into some very obscure 
corner. The reason for this was not immedi- 
ately apparent, but presently came the sound 
of chanting from the gravel outside. It was 
Guy marching up and down like a Highlander 
with the pipes. Instead of pipes he held out 
in front of him the garden shears which he 
clashed as he marched. And from his lips 

42 



CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

came the terrible refrain, oft repeated, "Has 
anybody got a little girl what sucks her 
thumbs?" It was some time before Penelope 
could be coaxed out into daylight again, still 
protesting in a fine confusion of negatives. 

Literature provides us with plenty of sad 
but salutary histories for the benefit of persons 
who may need them, and where literature fails 
oral tradition steps in. There is hardly any 
conceivable set of circimistances in which 
some small boy or tiny girl has not come to 
utter grief through failing to observe certain 
rules of conduct approved by the Powers that 
Always Are. But the said Powers may be well 
advised to adorn their tales with some 
economy of misfortime, for fear the morals 
may be somewhat blunted. 

Take, for instance, the case of the Other 
Little Girl. She listened with roimd eyes for 
a year or two to stories about little girls who 
slid down bannisters and "sustained" broken 
legs, about other little girls who fell splosh 
into muddy ponds and were turned into frogs 

43 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

and ultimately eaten of eels, about damsels 
who flew up chimneys in flames, or flew down 
from tall trees in fragments. She absorbed 
the history of the pig-tailed child who 
approached a bull, and was tossed right up 
into the moon (nor has she ever come down 
again) , and the epitaph of the rash adventuress 
of whom it is written, "She ate berries." 
There is hardly any stirring episode in the 
annals of disaster with which she was not 
familiar. The words "I knew a little girl 
once" came in time to be an epitome of all 
that the world holds of tragedy. 

So far, so good. Forewarned is forearmed. 
The Other Little Girl should have been able to 
avoid everything that can disturb the even 
tenor of existence, but unhappily she began 
to put two and two together. All those little 
girls . . . why, there could be no little girls 
left if every time they wanted to do anything 
they weie eaten, or drowned, or frozen, or 
something. And it was obvious that there 
were some little girls left — two at the Vicarage, 

44 



CONCERNING ANOTHER LITTLE GIRL 

Mrs. Stubbs's three, Mrs. Jones's Annie, all 
the cousins — there were heaps of them. Little 
girls wherever one looked. Nothing but little 
girls. As for their never wanting to do any- 
thing, a fig for such pedantry. Pish and 
Pooh! 

The Other Little Giil said nothing of her 
discovery — it was not her way to play into the 
enemy's hands — but she bided her time. 
Opportunity would surely give her the neces- 
sary opening. It did, soon after her fifth 
birthday, when a scheme which she had pro- 
pounded was ruthlessly declared null and void. 
Drawing herself up to her full height, and 
fortifying herself with a deep breath, the Other 
Little Girl began to tell a story. "I knew an 
old father once ..." 

It is a matter for regret that the details of 
that story are missing and always have been. 
Perhaps there wasn't really a story. Anyhow 
the opening sentence did its work. The Other 
Little Girl was never seriously bothered with 
apocryphal infants again. She pursued an 

45 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

uneven career without any handicaps of that 
sort. 

It is in memory of that great victory that we 
are very temperate in pressing horrid examples 
on Penelope's notice. It was a wise oracle 
which suggested that victories are not two- 
sided. Somebody has to lose. 



46 



V 
DINNERS AND DINERS 

IF the proof of the pudding be really in the 
eating, our puddings are beyond either 
question or argument, especially that particu- 
lar pudding which is shaped like a football and 
is richly compounded with treacle. How much 
of Surprise Pudding, as it is called, we can 
assimilate has never been proved, because of a 
certain convention which is based on the word 
"enough." One or two experiments have 
been made with the object of seeing at what 
point enough would merge into what Shakes- 
peare calls "the great too much," but nerve 
has always failed the dispenser before the 
experiment has come to the crisis. That is 
very natural. When the minute Penelope has 
eight portions to her credit, and the slightly 
larger Guy nine, the responsibility of helping 
them into double figures seems too serious 

47 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

to be faced. Anyhow it would be mistaken 
kindness and might deprive them of future 
gratification. It is not yet proved perhaps, 
but it is at least probable that a burst child 
dreads the pudding. 

Probably neither of them has got anywhere 
near the danger point really, for, be the help- 
ings so many as you please within the limits 
stated, there is never any diminution of post- 
prandial activity. While older folks sit 
quietly awhile, with folded hands and somno- 
lent minds, after a heavy meal, children are 
then most active. Catherine wheels would be 
the ideal exercise after dinner, but that is an 
accomplishment mastered by comparatively 
few. For our part we have to make shift with 
such partial expressions of exuberance as run- 
ning, jumping, wrestling, and voice production. 

The Surprise Pudding only falls short of the 
ideal in one particular, its colour. It is of a 
warm brown, with golden lights in it. It 
shares its comfortable hue with old brown 
sherry, with the ideal library carpet, with 

48 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

certain auttmin tints, and with other well- 
established things. But we have recently 
learnt that it is not all it might be. "After 
the war I thought Sheakar (treacle) would be 
pink.'' Thus Penelope, aggrieved. 

The quality of pinkness is much appreciated 
in certain — nay, in all — ^kinds of food which 
can acquire it. Porridge is pink, and so is 
custard. Almost everything of milky nature 
which you eat with a spoon has pinkness thrust 
upon it. Some cakes we believe to be bom 
pink. The origin of it all was simple enough. 
There came a day when the nursery rebelled 
against white groats. It was, in the current 
phrase, "fed up" with white groats. "Take 
the nasty groats away," it misquoted fiercely. 

The nasty groats were removed and went 
shamefaced back to the kitchen, while the 
ntirsery banged its spoons on the table, seeking 
to conceal a sensation of emptiness tinder a 
hearty manner of celebrating victory. 

But victory is not good for the nursery, 

especially if it involves emptiness, and the 
4 49 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Controller with a quiet smile did a little magic 
with cannisters or phials or something, stirred 
in a cauldron over the leaping flames, and 
presently up came a wonderful new breakfast 
dish which passed all previous experience. It 
had, it is true, the consistency and bulk of the 
groats which had been defeated, but its colour 
was as the first faint glow when rosy-fingered 
Aurora places her hand on the pearly gates of 
Dawn to open them. "Go," said the Nursery 
and "Go" again, and the spoons leaped to the 
fray like one spoon. Since then pinkness has 
been the staple of our gastronomies. 

If that fails, the Controller will probably try 
the Neapolitan ice dodge. When you have 
colours in layers or rows you have to eat them 
all to see which you like best. And when 
you have found out you have to keep that one 
till last. And if you don't eat the others it 
can't be last. So there is your affair arranged. 

Gf course some things cannot of their nature 
be pink, Brussels sprouts, for instance, and 
then hesitation may have to be combated by 

50 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

some other form of brain-wave. Brussels 
sprouts have been rendered acceptable by the 
theory that they are baby cabbages which 
are much in favour with the fairies. Where 
the fairies lead we follow. 

For grown-up cabbage, however, it is harder 
to find an argument. To say that it is "so 
good for" us, is to say exactly nothing. That 
expression is decrepit from having been kicked 
aroimd the nurseries of the world for centuries. 
The cabbage so far as we have been able to 
observe is in favour with nothing except 
rabbits and caterpillars. Is thy servant a 
caterpillar? The Controller, however, intends 
to propound a likely theory which may place 
the cabbage in a more favourable light. 
Father Christmas — ^to whom be all honour 
— is, it appears, greatly addicted to cabbage. 
Mrs. Christmas gives him a large one with 
his turkey and plum pudding every day of his 
life, except when he has a parsnip or a turnip 
or a carrot. All these, oddly enough, are 
vegetables for which a good word is required. 

51 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

It was during the reign of offals when the 
following instance of Penelope's shrewd com- 
mon sense and freedom from sentimentality- 
was given to a noticing world. The pig, whose 
name was WofHes, had recently gone from 
among us respected by all who knew him, and 
not least by Penelope. She had been wont 
daily to repair to his sty, offering in hand, 
much after the manner of the "Lady who 
loved a swine" and who appears in the family 
song book. It was to be feared that Penelope 
would grieve for his loss, and the legend was 
growing up round the sides of bacon now 
a-curing that they had been provided by quite 
another pig named Rootler who flourished 
aforetime in Dorsetshire. 

Well, one day in the time of offals, as has 
been said (what strange meats we did consume 
then, to be sure!), there came to table a dish 
on which was a goodly cover. Penelope sat 
with the earnest expression which she always 
wears when there is feasting toward and gazed 
expectantly on the cover. It was removed 

52 



' DINNERS AND DINERS 

and there came to view the melancholy count- 
enance of one who had once frisked, a blithe 
lamb, over the breezy down, but was now old 
and become mutton (where the mutton part 
had gone to let other more fortimate folk 
say). 

Penelope looked long at this lacklustre 
visage, and then a pleasant friendly beam 
o'erspread her own face. "Hullo, Woffles," 
she said. "What Prince shall promise such 
Diutumity imto his Reliques," especially if 
they be not his relics at all but only those of 
poor Wat the hedger? We can now talk of 
Woffles, his past virtues, and his present 
utility, as much as we like. As for Rootlei, 
that worthy son of Dorset, he will keep until it 
is necessary to soothe the sorrows of Poggin, if 
any. Children, however, seem to be of sterner 
fibre than of old. 

You have not perhaps met the chub. Any- 
how it is unlikely that you have met the chub 
on the table. A worthy fish in other respects, 
he lacks some of the qualities desired in table 

53 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

delicacies. Not but what he can be eaten. 
In fact he has been eaten. During the period 
that preceded the time of offals — ^let us call it 
the time of haricots — ^we got to know the chub 
very well, his bones, his soft flesh, his weedy 
flavour, and everything. Had Guy com- 
plained of the chub no one would have been 
surprised, nor anyone, save only the catcher of 
chubs, pained. 

His feelings, be it said in passing, can no 
longer be considered. If his basket held more 
trout or perch it might be otherwise. But 
chub, or roach ! And the nearer we get to the 
time of roast beef the less will his "scaly 
spoil" (the expression is very occasionally 
justified, as here) have an enthusiastic 
welcome. 

To resume. Guy worried through the time 
of haricots tempered by chub without any 
public protest, and it can only have been the 
too sanguine expectations of the new era that 
eventually caused him to lose patience with 
dried haddock, which, however you regard it in 

54 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

itself, is a finer dish than the most stalwart 
chub. Dried haddock appeared at breakfast 
one morning soon after November the eleventh 
with its customary assuredness. Guy 
regarded it dispiritedly. "I did hope," he 
said, "after the war God would have made a 
new kind of fish." Penelope tvimed placidly 
to her bantam's egg. She gave up the pre- 
tence of liking fish, old or new, some time ago, 
and has a special ration of bantam's eggs 
reserved for her. 

Pieces of resistance, as they were of old, are 
almost unknown to us, for the time of potatoes 
which, as you will remember, preceded the 
time of haricots, had set in before most of us 
were out of the spo.on and gravy age. Possi- 
bly they have barons of beef, shoulders of 
mutton, and so on in Christmas Land, where 
also are most of the chocolates and all the 
Turkish delight. No thank you, not any beef. 
If I might trouble you for another morsel of 
parsnip. . . . 

The foundations of our growth are probably 
55 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

laid most securely at tea-time. Then, were 
you to watch us, you would understand why 
keeping the "fivepenny loaf at ninepence" 
has been costing our devoted Government 
forty million poimds per anntim . Not that we 
eat as much as we could. We only eat all 
that there is, first spread with butter, and 
then — ^that old custom truly honoured — with 
the jam of the day. 

That there is jam is due to the fact that 
the sugar has been diverted from its ephemeral 
habit. Save for the nursery ration, f oW of 
the household sugar goes into the stew-pan 
with pltims or blackberries or whatever is good 
and plenty, and so lives for many days or even 
months, instead of pleastiring a minute. The 
sugar basin appears at meal-times so that 
appearances may be preserved. It seems also 
to hold sugar, a few modest grains just cover- 
ing the bottom. But if, being a stranger, you 
seek to mitigate your stewed plimis or your 
damsons therewith you receive a shock. 
Those grains of sugar have been placed in situ 

56 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

with cementium or some such impregnable 
compost. So you scratch at them for form's 
sake, make the motions of sugaring yoiir fruit 
for dignity's sake, and for manners' sake keep 
a straight face though the damsons threaten 
to screw you into spirals. The Controller 
knows how the sugar basin is organised. 
Nobody else does. 

To resimie again. As has been said, at 
nursery tea we stretch out our hands to the 
good things lying ready before us, much as did 
Ulysses and his companions, and when we 
have put away the desire of eating and drink- 
ing, we sometimes realise that there is Cake. 
There upon we at once resume the desire of 
eating, till the cake is all gone too. 

It is a little curious, this Power of Cake. It 
must, in Penelope's case anyhow, be a sort of 
inherited instinct. The Other Little Girl — so 
the story runs — ^at about the same age was 
taken out to tea at a house four miles away, 
and there she met such a Cake as never was, 
all studded with ruby cherries and gleaming 

57 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

with sweet hoar frost. And it had a four-inch 
fairy on top. On the homeward drive the 
Other Little Girl could talk of nothing but the 
cake, how good it was, and how she wished she 
could have eaten some more, and why didn't 
they give her the fairy? 

On the morrow the Other Little Girl was 
missing when tea-time came, and a sad houi or 
so the Powers that Used to Be had of it, 
searching the garden, the nut walk, the reedy 
margin of the Broad, in the gathering dusk. 
Of course you guess where she was all the time 
— sitting opposite that Cake and steadily 
working her way loimd till the fairy should 
have nothing to stand upon and so must fall, 
an easy prey. She came home in a luxurious 
carriage in due course, sleepy but triumphant, 
holding the fairy in one hand and in the other 
a note which hoped that, as the cake was really 
"quite plain," an honoiired guest would be 
none the worse. 

The addiction of Penelope to Cake, when 
you compare her opportunities with the Other 

58 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

Little Girl's, is really rather pathetic. For 
what has passed for cake in these recent 
hungry years has, to those who remember 
Sweet Argos, been more like bran flavoured 
with chicory, sweetened with beetroot, spotted 
with black dried peas, garnished with potato 
peel, and baked in a cold oven, than anything 
else that can be immediately called to mind. 
We can imagine Dr. Johnson sampling it and 
observing, "Now, a fool would have swallowed 
that." 

Yet Penelope, and in a lesser degree Guy 
despite his dim memories of an earlier period, 
gets excited about anything that is called cake. 
Cake may even have curative properties. 
Only the other day poor Penelope complained 
of malaise just before tea. No, she could eat 
nothing and would like to go to bed. Not a 
little piece of bread-and-butter? By no means. 
Bread-and-butter was horrid. A spoonful of 
cherry jam or a nice finger of toast? Not 
even that. 

Then of course cake was not. . . . Well, 
59 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

perhaps Penelope could manage a bit of cake. 
There were three pieces of cake, one for every- 
body except Poggin, who does not eat cake yet 
in any profusion. Penelope ate her own piece 
and then sat looking mom"nful, until it was 
suggested that as she was such a poor little 
girl Someone would give up the second piece 
to her. So Penelope ate the second piece and 
felt better for it. 

Then the charitable Guy made a generous 
offer. As Someone's piece was now gone, 
how would it be if they twain cut the third 
piece into two halves and had one each. 
Whereat Penelope, now much brisked up, 
asked why not three halves, so that there 
should be no one left out in the cold. This 
ingenious suggestion ultimately lost itself in a 
mathematical argimient, at the end of which 
Guy showed conclusively that you could not 
cut a thing into halves for three people, though 
you might if there had been four, as fortu- 
nately there were not, Poggin not ranking as a 
fourth half. 

60 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

Penelope did not get any more cake, but 
she fell to on the bread-and-butter and after- 
wards pn the bread-and-jam, and has seldom 
done herself better in the matter of quantity. 
But for Cake she might have gone to bed tea- 
less. 

While others dispute over cake Poggin 
addresses himself to a piece of bread-and- 
butter with his sleeves rolled up. You will 
never know how much can be done with one 
small piece of bread-and-butter till you have 
watched him at work. Having done so, you 
will realise that it can be turned into a mop, a 
quoit, a ball, and a thousand fragments, and 
yet serve as nourishment at the same time. 
Poggin is an earnest follower of the late Mr. 
Gladstone in his way of eating. Possibly that 
is because, for his age, he is imusually ill- 
found in the matter of teeth. But he gets 
there in the long rxm. 

When we want a little diversion we present 
Poggin with a new taste, as a fragment of 
chocolate, or an eggspoonful of a strange jam, 

6i 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

or something like that. His perfectly round 
face then screws itself up thoughtfully and 
remains screwed up imtil he has decided 
whether this is a worthy taste or no. If the 
answer is in the affirmative, he signifies the 
same by slowly imscrewing his face into a 
bland smile. In the other event he takes 
what steps are necessary to rid himself of an 
embarrassment . 

It is on record that Guy treated his first 
strawberry (the first of the season) in that way. 
But it was not long before he decided that this 
was a mistake. Indignant clamour attended 
an effort to present the second of the season 
to someone else. In about twenty -four hotu"S 
he was to be found with sundry young black- 
birds under the netting making up for lost 
time. He is now of old Dr. Boteler's opinion, 
who held that "Doubtless God could have 
made a better berry, but doubtless God never 
did." Latterly strawberries have been as 
rare as they are delightful. Only the little 
wild ones under the fourth apple-tree have 

62 



DINNERS AND DINERS 

given anything of a harvest, and they are 
considered the perquisites of Teddy and 
Cassandra (an alleged doll). Fortunately 
both individuals enjoy the delicacies of the 
season by proxy. 



63 



VI 

A POOR EFFORT 

ONCE there was a little boy (or 
girl) ..." The French proverb says 
that it is only the first step that really gives 
trouble, but the French proverb lies. The 
second step is even more difficult, and as for 
the third and subsequent steps, they are pain- 
ful beyond belief. This art of impromptu 
narrative is not to be easily mastered, and yet 
we find that the need for mastering it becomes 
more pressing daily. When four round eyes 
are sternly fixed on you, the demand for fable 
or fiction having been presented in due form, 
the plea of an empty mind will not avail. 

"Once there was a little boy (or girl) . . . '* 
it is comparatively easy to begin in the com- 
mon form. Anyone can do that. But how 
are you to go on? A more supremely unin- 
teresting child than this creation of yours 

64 



A POOR EFFORT 

could not be met with anywhere. He (or she) 
just was, and that is all there is about him 
(or her) . 

"What happened to the little boy (or 
girl)"? A natural question, for the creature 
has now been before the public for some 
minutes, and has got no further than just 
being. Well, we must move on a bit. Let us 
invent boldly. 

"And he (or she) lived in a house." 

"Was it a big house? Did it have 
chimneys? 

"A very big house with seven chimneys." 

"Why did it have seven chimneys?" 

"One for every day in the week." 

"One for Sunday too?" 

"No, two for Sunday. It was a very well 
arranged house." 

" Did they smoke? Did the little boy (or 
girl) go up the chimneys?" 

Here must a final decision as to the sex of 
this Frankenstein be made. Undoubtedly it 
went up the chimneys in any case, and got as 
s 65 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

black as it possibly could, but if it was a little 
girl one could not divulge the fact. Better 
make it a boy, because there is a sort of lead 
given now, and if it were sacrificed through 
chivalry, some other adventure would have to 
be found. 

"Yes, the little boy used to go up the 
chimneys." 

"What did he go up the chimneys for?" 

Now what should the pestilent infant go up 
chimneys for? Soot perhaps, but that sets a 
bad example. Ah, an idea! "He used to go 
up the chimneys to look for bird's nests." 

"Bird's nests? I thought he went up to 
sweep them, like Tom. Did he get all black, 
and come down in a bedroom?" 

What a treacherous thing is memory ! Here 
has the worthy Vicar of Eversley saved us all 
the trouble, and yet we must go striking out 
new lines for ourselves because we forgot 
all about Water Babies. We are committed 
now. 

"Oh no, they were nice clean chimneys and 
66 



A POOR EFFORT 

didn't need sweeping. And he didn't get 
black. You see, there was hardly any soot in 
the chimneys." 

"Didn't they smoke? How did the people 
cook? Wasn't there no fires? " 

"They only had very little fires. You see, 
it was war-time and the Controller only let 
them have their coal in sugar basins. They 
cooked one egg a week. And the chimneys 
only smoked like the end of a cigarette." 

"Did they blow rings like Uncle Tertius 
does? Did the little boy eat the egg? Did 
he get it out of the nests in the chimneys? " 

"No, there wasn't enough smoke to blow 
rings with in all that wind. It was a very 
windy place. The little boy used to have a 
little bit of the egg. No, he didn't find it in 
the nests. It costs ninepence in a shop." 

"What else did he eat?" 

Somehow this child does not fit in with the 
idea of good food. He is not worth it. Let 
him be rationed. 

"He didn't eat anything else. He used to 
67 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

be up the chimneys so much that he didn't 
want to eat. It took his appetite away." 

"Why did he eat the egg then?" 

Out of pure cussedness, no doubt. But 
that won't do for a reason. This story -telUng 
is simply getting out of one tangle into another. 

"The egg was different. It was an Easter 
egg, you see." 

"Was it chocolate? Did Uncle Easter 
bring it?" 

"No, I told you it came out of a shop. It 
wasn't chocolate. It was an ordinary egg.'' 

" But you said an Easter egg. And how did 
they cook it every week if it was an Easter egg? ' ' 

"It was an ordinary Easter egg. The 
others weren't the same egg. They were 
Advent eggs, Epiphany eggs, and twenty- 
third after Trinity eggs, and eggs like that. 
All very ordinary." 

" Oh. How many eggs are there? " 

This science of mathematics is the deuce. 
On one occasion Guy, having learnt up to 
twenty, asked "the name of the last count." 

68 



A POOR EFFORT 

Who is to say how many eggs there are? 
Happily we seem to be losing touch with that 
unmanageable little chimney boy, so let us 
follow this new track. 

"Ever so many eggs, if you coimt the 
addled ones." 

"What's addled?" 

What, in effect, is addled? Lacking the 
vital principle, presumably, but if we say so 
we shall only be asked what vital principle is. 
Let us try the old wives' method. 

"Oh, they're the eggs that swim when you 
put them in water. Other eggs sink." 

"Why don't they all swim?" 

"Because some are heavier than others." 

"Oh. Do wren's eggs swim?" 

"Not unless they're addled." 

"But they're ever so much lighter than 
hen's eggs. Why do you want eggs to swim? " 

"You don't. It!s the last thing you want 
them to do." 

"Well, why do you put them in the water 
then?" 

69 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

"To boil them, of course." 
"Oh. Did the little boy put his egg in the 
water?" 

Back to our muttons again ! The wretched 
little boy seems more lifeless every minute. 
Let us try and galvanise him into some sort 
of activity. 

' ' No, he couldn't, because he was up the chim- 
neys. And so he put his head out at the top.*' 
" Did he put his hat on? " 
"Yes, he had his hat on." 
"I expect he knew he was going to put his 
head out." 

"Yes, he was a clever little boy. And then 
the wind blew his hat off, and he popped his 
head in again for fear of catching cold." 
"Where did it blow the hat to?" 
"It blew the hat up into the sky." 
"How high? As high as the aeroplanes?" 
"Higher than that. It got lost in a cloud." 
"Did he go and fetch his other hat? " 
"No, you see he had gone back into the 
chimney, so he didn't want his other hat." 

70 



A POOR EFFORT 

* ' What happened next ? " 

What on earth did happen next? That is 
just the bother. This wretched infant mewed 
in a chimney gives us no scope at all. If only 
we had made him jump after his hat instead 
of tamely crawling back, we might have had 
some brave aerial doings As it is there seems 
to be no future for him. 

"Well, he just stayed where he was and 
thought a bit." 

"What did he think about." 

A bright idea! Let us introduce a new 
character and see if we can side-track the 
chimney-child. 

"He thought about his little sister." 

"Was she in the chimneys too?" 

"Oh no. She was a good little girl, safe 
in bed." 

' ' Did she have a doll or a Teddy? " 

"Yes, she had a doll." 

"Where was the doll?" 

"That was in bed too. They were both 
fast asleep." 

71 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

"Oh. Did the Httle boy put his head out 
again?" 

What a misfortune is this sluggish mind! 
Here we have two new and useful characters 
and have found nothing better to do with them 
than to send them to sleep. They ought to 
have gone to a party or something. So we 
have the boy on our hands once more and he 
grows less tolerable every minute. 

"Yes, when he had done thinking, he put 
his head out again. But by that time it had 
come on to rain." 

"Did he get wet?" 

"No, he didn't stay long enough to get wet. 
He went back into the chimney." 

Positively he did this of his own accord. 
It was our firm intention to keep him with his 
head out, and even to let him sit on the roof. 
Then he could have admired the scenery, and 
there would have been plenty of details about 
trees, and churches, and villages, and all sorts 
of interesting things. But what can you do 
with a child who insists on lurking in a 

72 



A POOR EFFORT 

chimney when the world is so full of better 
places? 

"Did he always stay in the chimney?" 

This is fairly direct criticism, even if it be 
imconscious. Exhausted nature, however, is 
quite unequal to the task of furbishing up 
the protagonist in the drama. He must 
remain a monimient of futility. 

' ' Yes, pretty nearly always. You see, as he 
had no appetite, and didn't care for toys or 
anything, there was nothing much else for him 
to do." 

"Oh." 

"So that is the story of the little boy who 
lived in the big house with the seven 
chimneys." 

"Is that all?" 

"Yes, that's all." 

"Please tell another story." 

Who shall say that the child nature is not 
forgiving? 



73 



VII 

THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

"/^^AN I have it when it's empty?" You 
^-^ will not pass many hotirs with us with- 
out hearing this petition, presented to some 
member of the household in Guy's most insinu- 
ating manner. It does not seem to matter 
what "it" is, so long as it is capable of empti- 
ness. Cardboard box, biscuit-tin, tea or 
tobacco packet, sugar or flour bag, anything 
in the nature of a receptacle is coveted and, if 
possible, added to the growing store. 

The appetite for empty receptacles is in- 
satiable. The inconvenient fulness of things 
is the only check it knows. "Would you like 
to have The Furlongs when it is empty?" 
The Furlongs is our house, and the question 
was asked with a vague hope of impressing on 
the collector the fact that there is sl limit 
somewhere. 

74 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

He considered the proposition gravely. 
"Yes," he said at length, "and then I would 
put it in the toy-cupboard." On occasion we 
are not quite sure whether Guy speaks with 
entire seriousness or whether he consciously 
unbends and indulges what he sees to be his 
interlocutor's desire for persiflage. It is then 
that he is apt to score. A reply of that sort 
proves that there is no limit. After all. Father 
Christmas or one of the more important 
fairies could no doubt arrange to pack The 
Furlongs inside one of its own cupboards. It 
would be a fine confused situation, but by no 
means beyond imagining. 

The beginning of the enthusiasm for vacant 
spaces dates back to the time when Peter 
sojourned with us. That god-like mortal 
bestrode our world like a veritable Colossus, 
and Guy looked up to him with the eyes of 
adoration. As is the bantam chick to the 
towering eagle, so is Four-and-a-half to Rising- 
eight. Peter naturally had all the interests 
and enthusiasms proper to a gentleman of his 

75 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

years, and he was soon attended with sincerest 
flattery in his uprisings, his down-sittings, in 
the fashion of his speech, in every course which 
he dehghted to run. In time it became a little 
embarrassing to him, as can readily be under- 
stood, and he took to lengthening his stride. 
The "sedulous ape" must always be trying to 
the Exemplar. 

However, before Peter had shaken himself 
free of his following, much was accomplished. 
When Guy strode in from the garden announc- 
ing, 'Tve got a jolly good flint," it was clear 
that a definite page of life had been turned. 
No one acquires jolly good flints who has not 
breathed the ampler air. It was not so very 
long since Guy had coincided with Penelope 
in regarding all small bits of stone as just 
"grabbles." That they could be divisible 
into flints and other things, including thunder- 
bolts, had not dawned on our community. 
But Peter altered all that. Even Penelope 
took to isolating fragments of mud or what 
not and regarding them as luggage. A piece 

76 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

of toasted cheese removed from a mouse-trap 
was for some time one of her most valued 
possessions. 

Then there were birds' eggs. If Peter 
excels in any one walk of life it is in the 
collection, classification, and housing of birds' 
eggs. He pursues the red-shank to its marshy 
haimt, he quarters the plover-country like a 
land-surveyor, disregarding the enticements of 
limping foot and fluttering wing which lead 
the rest of us astray. He watches the progress 
of the reed-warbler's nest from its first slight 
foundations to its crowded breaking-up day; 
he knows when the cuckoo is boasting of hav- 
ing laid up trouble for others, and can make a 
shrewd guess as to the hedge and the portion 
of it where an unfortunate little brown bird 
is bending a dismayed beady eye on such an 
egg as was never in her family before, and 
trying to make up her mind that things often 
tvirn out better than one expects. Peter 
knows the right number and arrangement of 
every clutch wherever found, and he keeps 

77 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

a "bird book" in which he makes drawings of 
them all. In short, so far as we can judge, 
nothing concerning the subject is hidden from 
him. 

Naturally, with such a guide and counsellor 
on the premises, The Furlongs became at once 
a sort of Ornithological Society. Every morn- 
ing if you looked out of the dining-room 
window at breakfast-time you could see signs 
of it, such as Penelope investigating the bushes 
on the other side of the lawn, or Guy stepping 
like Agag towards some distant blackbird 
with one hand outstretched and the other 
grasping a screw of blue paper which contained 
that useful bird-hunter's companion, half an 
ounce of best salt. He did not, it is believed, 
ever succeed in effecting the necessary sprink- 
ling of a tail, but he quite realised that this was 
in part due to his own lack of subtlety in 
coming unperceived round corners. He hopes 
for better results when an intensive study of 
bird life enables him to know whether there is 
a bird round a corner without looking to see. 

78 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

Then a hand will be imperceptibly advanced, 
a pinch of salt will be applied, and the thing 
will have been done. 

The other method is getting a cap of invisi- 
bility such as the Youngest Prince had. This 
has been out of the question for a considerable 
time. The war has had a marked effect on all 
haberdashery, especially that intended for 
princes. The democratic alternative, camou- 
flage, has its disadvantages. We have care- 
fully refrained from suggesting to Guy that he 
should conceal himself by glaring colour- 
contrasts. Even if he did not take the notion 
up, Penelope would get to hear of it and she 
would certainly make some experiments. The 
idea of a reticulated little girl would appeal to 
her strongly apart from all practical consider- 
ations of wild-fowling. 

Penelope has not been very much more suc- 
cessful in regard to nests than Guy in regard to 
their makers. A stature of thirty-one inches 
imposes serious limitations. Still she did 
poke one nest down with a long stick and 

79 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

considered that a good result of several morn- 
ings' strenuous endeavour. It was a very old 
nest, but that did not matter to Penelope, while 
it was considered a f ortimate circimistance by 
everybody else. The back view of Penelope 
looking for birds' nests in an azalea is a sight 
that must be seen to be believed. 

In the matter of eggs our efforts have been 
more blessed, partly because we have all 
combined. The chaffinch's nest in the fork of 
the fifth apple-tree, the greenfinch's nest in the 
holly, the robin's in the ivy-wall, the willow 
wren's in the corner of the porch — all these 
have yielded an egg apiece. Then there 
have been blackbirds, thrushes, swallows, tits 
and starlings, which have contributed to the 
growing collection. There was a moor-hen's 
nest on the pond, and a partridge's within six 
inches of the garden door — a siu*prising situ- 
ation for it, and it was scarcely odd that it 
was deserted. 

The really remarkable find, however, was 
the mysterious nest in the shrubbery between 

80 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

the kitchen garden wall and the hedge which 
shuts us off from the road. This is tract of 
little-known country as it lies off the beaten 
path, and somehow it had been overlooked in 
previous explorations. One day, however, 
Guy penetrated into this remote part and 
presently there could be heard great shoutings 
and exultations. In a brief space he emerged 
clasping what can only be described as an 
EGG. It measured fully ten inches in length 
and had a girth of nearly twice as much. 

The nest in which this trophy had been 
found was a substantial affair built of sticks 
and hay and we all went to look at it. It was 
agreed that it was "some nest," but what 
bird could have built it or laid such an EGG 
has never been clearly settled to this day. 
One of the turkeys from the farm might per- 
haps have done it had it been ten times as big 
as itself, but we have made stire that none of 
the turkeys are like that this year. Nor are 
the swans on the river, nor the herons which 
occasionally visit the little stream in frog-time. 
6 8i 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

We have been forced to the conclusion that 
some exceedingly migratory bird of excep- 
tional physique has been with us, but it has 
evidently gone on towards the North, for there 
has been no sign of it, nor have there been any 
more eggs. Penelope, after heavy thinking, 
suggested that it was an aeroplane's egg. 
Perhaps it is. Anyhow it is the gem of Guy's 
collection and its layer has been tentatively 
named Avis guii var: ignotus. 

The only inconvenient result of this find has 
been the impossibility of carrying the whole 
egg-collection about wherever one goes, as was 
the custom. The part has become greater 
than the whole, and whereas the whole used to 
travel in a cigar box, the part requires a band- 
box. A band-box is so bulky that we have 
perforce had to adopt a new and more portable 
form of collection, leaving the eggs for pur- 
poses of reference indoors. 

We have not, by the way, told Peter about 
the EGG. Some of us have a hesitation about 
doing so. He might (being a sceptic who is 

82 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

alleged to doubt the bona fides of even Father 
Christmas) diagnose it as having been laid in 
other climes by an ostrich and as having been 
brought overseas and placed in a prepared 
position by some person or persons unknown 
with intent to mislead. That would be a pity, 
because, as has been said, Peter is authori- 
tative and when he says a thing is so, it is so, 
anyhow about eggs. 

The next step in the collector's progress was 
taken when Guy went away to the seaside for a 
never-to-be-forgotten fortnight. The seaside 
is literally paved with material for collections. 
Shells of all shapes and sizes, cunningly 
wrought and polished stones, bits of broken 
green or blue glass which rolling tides have 
ground to smoothness — these things and much 
more are to be had for the trouble of stooping. 
We say nothing of crabs, and shrimps and pop- 
weed, because these are evanescent delights. 
The others can be depended upon to last as 
long as you are likely to want them. 

It was at the seaside that Guy got his first 
83 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

real insight into the vanity of himian aspira- 
tions. He saw a peculiarly desirable shell 
lying at his feet, and he made as if to pick it 
up. But, alas, he was immediately assailed 
with great pains and he could not achieve his 
object. Whereupon he complained mourn- 
fully that it hurt him to stoop "horrible." 
This seemed alarming, for it is not natural 
that a young youth of just five should suffer 
from lumbago, or even from stiffness. 

Investigation, however, revealed the fact 
that it was merely a question of trouser 
pockets. When you have filled your trouser 
pockets to the brim with jetsam and have 
topped the two loads with a brace of large 
irregular stones as copings you will, not 
unnaturally, be hampered in stooping after 
more. The trouble comes in adjusting a 
desire for more to a determination to carry all 
your worldly goods in two small pockets. It 
passes the wit of man to make these extremes 
meet. 

In Guy's case, of course, determination 
84 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

yielded to desire, and from that moment we 
date his passion for empty boxes. He was 
resolved never to be in such an awkward 
predicament again, and he now has ample 
storage accommodation for everything that he 
is likely to amass. Nominally it is all being 
set aside for the next visit to the seaside. 
Practically, however, it is developing into a 
lust for receptacles on their own account. 
The reasonable theory that "it will be very 
useful" has almost entirely given way to the 
unblushing attitude of the virtuoso, whose 
reason is frankly in abeyance. "That's four 
green ones I've got. And three brown ones. 
Did you know I'd got four green ones?" 

Why, a censorious world asks, should any- 
one want to have four green ones? But the 
virtuoso goes on his mad career unheeding. 
Guy is not the only reasonless creature in our 
community. If you look at our walls you will 
see a remarkable assortment of what are 
called "speculative oil paintings" or "well- 
executed water-colour drawings." If you run 

85 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

your eye along the shelves you will detect as 
tattered a regiment of cropped quartos and 
imperfect duodecimos as ever cried out for 
notice in that doleful place of lost books 
over whose portals is the inscription, "All 
these, Sixpence." 

It would, indeed, be odd if Guy, and in due 
course Poggin (Penelope's attitude towards 
the business is thoroughly feminine; that is to 
say, her collecting is partly imitative and 
partly companionable), did not run through 
the whole gamut of sensations which the ard- 
ent collector knows. 

Some day they will doubtless have the 
rapture of settling down to an oil-painting 
which is so speculative as to be invisible and of 
seeing it grow under the cleaner's hand into a 
recognisable presentment of a face, or a tree, or 
a rocky coast, or whatever lies beneath the 
varnish and grime. 

They may also come to realise how fleeting 
rapture can be, and re-live those few tantalis- 
ing minutes when from the gloom of age-long 

86 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

varnish emerged the Queen of the Adriatic, 
looking as fresh and fair as Aphrodite the sea- 
born herself, with the gondolas, the palaces, 
the gay crowds, and the very light-flecks (as 
one dare asseverate) of Guardi's own brush- 
emerged, glowed, and vanished. 

If the experience teaches them nothing 
else it will teach them to leave methylated 
spirit alone, and to stick to the innocuous 
half -potato or the relatively harmless yellow 
soap on a bit of soft rag. Perhaps, also, it 
will teach them nothing at all. That has 
happened in the past. Even to this day you 
will find a bottle of methylated spirit in a 
quiet comer of a certain drawer in a particular 
bureau, which stands in a study that need not 
be further specified. What a shine a spirit- 
moistened rag does put on a dulled surface if 
you whisk it lightly over! How much more 
satisfying is this than rubbing your dingy old 
picture with a silk handkerchief every day for 
six months ! 

Guy and Poggin will doubtless come to 
87 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

know the merits of that quality in a man which 
Horace Walpole called "serendipity," the 
faculty of lighting on a thing which you want 
particularly just when you want it. They 
will revel in the experience of discovering a 
first edition of Gray's Elegy in the untidy 
window of a small bookshop, in the purchase 
of the same for the ridiculous sum of eighteen 
pence, and in the subsequent walk homeward 
with head striking the stars. 

Unless the memory of the rising generation 
is better than that of its parents, they will no 
doubt discover, on consulting the works of 
reference, that they were a decade or so out 
in their estimate of the first edition's date and 
that their purchase is really worth about a 
penny, being not only a mere reprint but 
tattered at that. But they may none the 
less give thanks for having been serendipitous 
for however brief a space. So long as you 
think the thing you want is the thing you 
want and not another thing, you have your 
heart's desire. If you have not got your 

88 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

heart's desire, then you have got something 
else. In later life collecting is like that, one 
part serendipity and the other ninety-and- 
nine parts experience. 

In the golden years it is all serendipity 
because everything that you want is what 
you want. If it ceases to have that character 
you turn to and want something else; all 
things under the sim or moon are to be desired, 
picked up, and put into your trouser's pocket. 
Even dead things, or worms, so long as the 
Eye of Authority is turned inward in con- 
templation of virtue rather than outward in 
search of lapses therefrom. 

To turn to less debatable matters. A 
collection which rivals the pile of boxes in 
importance is the album of postage stamps. 
Here again Peter was the arbiter of fashion, 
for so much of his mind as could be spared 
from birds was given to stamps. There is 
nothing to distinguish Guy's collection from 
many others, unless the fact that the fairies 
have had a share in forming it may be taken 

89 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

as distinctive. All modem collections no 
doubt have the same elements of strangeness — 
new men, new cities, new insignia. Gone are 
the valiant days when Britannia sat enthroned 
in the western islands, when the Cape of Good 
Hope looked at you from five brave triangles, 
when Newfoundland offered you an esculent 
codfish, and Western Australia a graceful 
swan. The modem stamp seems a cheap and 
nasty affair when compared with the fine bits 
of line and colour that stirred our pulses of 
yore. 

Indeed, so strongly has this been felt that 
the fairies were, so to speak, consulted about 
it. Would it be quite out of the question to 
bring back a few worthy samples from the 
misty past, and so to make Guy's collection a 
matter in which a combination of effort would 
be more exciting? The information received 
was that prices had "advanced" so materially 
that even the fairies could not see their way 
to doing anything in the matter. With 
individual stamps marked at 4/9, 7/3, 12/6, 

90 



THE COLLECTOR'S PROGRESS 

and similar figures, it would be on the whole 
easier to collect war bonds. 

So Guy's collection waxes on modern lines. 
Fortunately he is not haunted by a memory of 
an album containing many of the rare old 
things which once changed hands at an 
inclusive price of fifty shillings. He need not 
call upon Jupiter to bring back the vanished 
years. 

The feminine attitude towards collecting 
is, as has been said, very well exemplified by 
Penelope. She also collects stamps. If we 
are not very careful she collects them from 
the letters which are waiting in the hall to be 
posted. Especially she collects them since 
letter- writing was visited with steadily increas- 
ing penalties. 



91 



VIII 

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

WHO put the horse in the pond? " For 
someone has committed that atro- 
cious act. The horse is one of those superfine 
animals which have a real skin, mane, and 
tail, and which only exist in modern nurseries 
as heirlooms. It has a brave cart belonging 
to it and harness, also a simiptuous stable 
with fittings — perhaps it would be safer to 
say it "had." We grow very uneasy as to the 
permanence of things in general. We have 
reason, as you shall discover. 

The pond itself is a constant threat to 
property. It would be worse if it were big- 
ger. Fortunately its come-at-able area is not 
much more than a square yard, though there 
are caverns measureless to Guy and Penelope 
which spread away under the wall-work. We 
do not know if it has yet occurred to them 

92 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

that by pushing flotsam away into the cav- 
erns more room may be made for new crimes. 
Possibly not. The model fowl-house, the 
Quaker-Oat-box, Poggin's left sand shoe, the 
odds and ends of wood, and cork, and flower- 
pot, and wire, and paper, the trowel, the 
watering-can, the seaside bucket and spade — 
these things, together with the horse, make 
the pond a thoroughly congested area. Deft 
manipulation would have sent much of this 
into perpetual hiding, and the present Row — 
we warrant you it is an Enquiry of the Strict- 
est and most Searching Character, such as 
they call for twice a day in the newspapers — 
would really have been no more than a sort 
of conference "with a view to arriving at a 
mutual understanding and if possible . . ." 
you know the good old phrases. As it is, the 
affair is serious. 

"Who put the horse in the pond?" Guy 
observes blandly that he does not know. 

"Did you put it in? " His manner becomes 
rather bored. Has he not said that he does 

93 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

not know who put it in? How then should 
he be informed whether it was himself or 
another? So many things get put into the 
pond from time to time that really it is 
impossible to distinguish ... his murmur- 
ings imply that he is not interested in minute 
points of detail. 

"But someone put it in," pursues the voice 
of the Court. If you hammer insistently on 
the same spot even the solid rock will in time 
become pervious to light and air. 

"Yes," suddenly and surprisingly agrees 
Guy, his whole manner taking on a renewed 
brightness. "And do you know, when you 
hold it up by its tail its tail drops out?" 

The Court, after this piece of testimony, has 
to turn to the East, whether to invoke a higher 
power or to smooth telltale creases from the 
comers of the mouth, or to convert certain 
inappropriate soimds into a cough, it skills 
not to discover. Suffice it that the witness 
may now stand down. 

Enter Penelope, a demure atom, costumed 
94 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

in brown with blue trimmings, with tow curled 
in the new fashion (it is new with us, anyhow, 
and came into vogue on New Nanny's arrival ; 
actually, we believe, the twining of hair round 
a finger was invented by Eve), and with hair- 
slide in proper position. The Court surveys 
Penelope. Penelope looks at the Court. One 
ringlet hangs distractingly near her left eye, 
giving her her most convincing "Nobody- 
hasn't-done-nothing " expression. 

But the Court is not to be intimidated. 
The Court plunges in the French manner — the 
British having failed so dismally with Guy — 
into accusation. It is for the criminal to rebut 
or wriggle out if she can. 

"The horse has been put in the pond. 
You're a very naughty little girl." Penelope 
meditates over these statements, the ringlet 
adjusting itself a little more bewitchingly to 
the left eye. There is a silence. 

"The horse," we repeat, "has been put in 
the pond. You're a very naughty little girl." 
There is another silence. The ringlet is now 

95 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

completely over the left eye, for Penelope's 
head is drooping towards the right. 

The Coiirt proceeds with a slight diminution 
of vehemence. Justice will perhaps be met 
without actual tears. "You're not at all a 
good little girl. You ..." 

It becomes apparent why Penelope's head 
dropped. Her unemployed eye was directed 
towards a small bar of iron lying on the 
grotmd, a memorial of certain works that 
have been in progress. The rest of her fol- 
lows the eye, and next moment she struggles 
upwards grasping the bar in both hands, a 
ringlet over each eye. "I can lift that," she 
declares proudly. 

"Where," the Court asks itself, again facing 
the East, "are you with such irrelevance?" 
There is nothing for it but for the second 
witness to stand down too. 

And so the Enquiry peters out, the Row 
dies of inanition. The only other possible 
witness would be Poggin, whose smile, itself 
an irrelevance, is subversive of all solemnity. 

96 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

And anyhow it is morally certain that he was 
not an actor in the affair, his opportunities 
being restricted. Besides in his most expan- 
sive moments he only says "Oo," emphasising 
the remark by pointing with his right fore- 
finger, and no Court could take action on that. 
Better to resolve itself into a fatigue party and 
clear up the mess. 

A short time has elapsed, as novelists say, 
and there is a silence about the house and in 
the precincts. No small feet patter over the 
cork line of the nursery, no shrill voices greet 
the morning, abuse the evening, or celebrate 
the jovial mid-way time of Dinner. We are, 
in a word, gone away to the sea, a little 
imcertain as to what we shall find there (all 
except Guy, who gave a confused report of 
shrimps, shells, gulls, sand, baskets, cake, salt 
water, and a modicimi of cream mixed up in a 
kind of pudding) but very ready to take what- 
ever "Deminshire'* offers of good cheer or 

diversion in a hearty spirit. 
7 97 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Only one person now walks in the garden, 
the President of the Court, and he is a little 
desolate. It is odd how oppressive is the 
absence of noise to the unaccustomed ear. A 
garden without its proper complement of 
mischief -workers is an empty place, be it never 
so crowded with green things and blossoms. 
It is saddening in its tidiness, its rectangles, its 
stiff formality, unbroken by irresponsible 
disorders or spontaneous mud pies. 

"A garden," so run the Presidential medi- 
tations, "wants unconsidered touches, such as 
a pinafore lying in a little heap on the drive, 
a small straw hat crowning the rubbish heap, 
a doll looking out of the cinder box, a trailer 
ready to catch the foot of the unwary just 
outside the garden door, a skipping rope 
stretched — hullo, what's that?" 

Something white is half in and half out of 
the box-edging, something that is certainly 
not formal whatever it may be. Closer 
inspection shows it to be Dog Toby. "How 
on earth did it get there?" murmurs the 

98 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

President as he puts it into his coat pocket, 
and he resumes his slow pacing. 

This is soon interrupted by an awkward jar 
as a foot descends on something hard and 
round and rolling. Here, of all people, is 
the unfortunate Mr. Equal, derelict in a heap 
of leaves at the edge of the path. Never has 
there been a more chequered career than that 
of Mr. Equal. He has been burnt and 
drowned several times. He has had fearful 
falls through the conservatory roof. His 
paint has dyed a hundred fields, in a manner 
of speaking, and here at last is he simply 
"exposed" and left to perish, like the un- 
wanted female infants of a pagan page. He 
joins Dog Toby in the pocket, moral reflections 
attending him. It seems certain that the toy- 
maker who sends out into the world a cross 
between a ninepin and a ball simply increases 
the troubles of that world. No matter how 
carefully he limns eyes, nose, and mouth upon 
the side of his creation, no matter how tenderly 
he pours melted lead into its stomach, he 

99 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

cannot make it other than a missile to be 
thrown, dropped, bowled, pitched or bumped 
into any misforttine that comes handy. For 
discreet and reverend seniors Mr.Equal would 
do very well as an idol or totem, on a writing- 
table, but to the rest of us he is quite 
obviously and necessarily something to do 
with dynamics. He had a bad start. He 
should have been "fancy goods" not a toy. 
And then he might have got into the upper 
circles and sat on rosewood. As it is he rolls in 
the mud. He has almost lost his claim to the 
title of "Mr." Soon he will be "that old fing." 
And then no more of him either for good or ill. 
Such is the sad moral of a misdirected life. 

Hardly is Mr. Equal moralised, when the 
foot nearly descends on a group which has 
gathered itself together in the corner by the 
far gate — by that portal you go out of the 
kitchen garden when you want to talk to the 
new pig. He lives in a garden of his own, 
with a lot of thistles, nettles, and other inter- 
esting growths. Jungles are nothing to it. 

100 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

The group, to get back to the subject, con- 
sists of Mr. Punch, the PoHceman, and the 
other watering-pot, the one which has a handle 
but no spout. The best watering-pot — it was 
just outside the garden door and caught the 
eye when the excursion began — has a spout 
but no handle. That is how you distinguish 
them. Naturally if they are together — and 
such a thing has been known — you grab the 
best one. A spout is worth two handles any 
day. What the group may be doing cannot be 
surmised, but it proves one thing beyond a 
doubt, the complete decay of the drama about 
which we hear so much. How shall the drama 
flourish when the chief actors are "resting"? 
Can Judy and the baby carry on by them- 
selves? Have they even a stage on which to 
try? It is a saddening affair. When one 
thinks how that true patron of all that is best 
in art. Father Christmas, "presented" Mi. 
Punch in his new play. The Bolshevik's House, 
and finds that the bulk of the cast is in the 
provinces after no more than a hundred nights, 

lOI 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

one can only conclude that support has been 
inadequate. It is to be feared that even the 
theatre no longer exists as such. Perhaps it 
has been commandeered for other purposes, 
as ship-building. Anyhow it is plain that 
Father Christmas threw away a lot of money, 
as lesser men than he have done before him. 
Theatrical speculation is a risky business. 

The Pocket is growing full, though of course 
the other watering-pot is not forced in with 
Pimch. Being the other and having a handle, 
it can be hung on a bent finger, and so carried. 
And it may even be useful to reinforce the 
pocket if things go on thus. For, look you, 
between the far gate and the greenhouse is a 
gleaming object which seems familiar, a black 
thing which looks out of place, and a third 
shape which arouses curiosity. None of these 
things are gravel path, at any rate, nor are 
they component parts thereof — ^it is quite easy 
to tell, even from a distance, when people have 
been playing at ballast holes, a delightful 
sloppy game in which you convey the paths 

102 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

away in the wagon, having first washed them 
well with water from the tank. To get the 
water, by the way, you have to stand on a 
platform because the tank is so tall. Two 
inverted flowerpots and a flat bit of wood 
make a platform. There is one by the tank 
now. When the game of ballast holes has 
been in progress it leaves heaps, of course, and 
heaps are easily identified. 

And those things are not heaps. The first, 
by all that is unholy, is the missing electric 
torch. The household has been much dis- 
turbed about that torch. The search for it 
has been proceeding for days. It was con- 
sidered a most useful article to be taken to 
Devonshire, where matches may be scarce. 
It was of course well known that Poggin had 
his eye upon it weeks ago. He has the jack- 
daw's fondness for all that glitters. But no 
one really suspected him of having annexed it. 
It shows that it does not do not to suspect 
people. The pocket begins to bulge. 

The black thing ten yards further on proves 
103 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

to be a small tin cooking-stove. It may 
have been doing duty as a camera, or a wheel- 
barrow, or a mowing-machine, or a hen with 
five chickens — ^you cannot tell what anything 
will be when Guy presses it into service, or 
indeed what nothing will be. For his simpli- 
city of staging is Elizabethan, and at a pinch 
he will do without properties altogether. 
Neither Penelope nor Poggin quite enter into 
the spirit of this, it is to be feared. She 
likes to call things by their right names so 
nearly as she can manage it. To her the light 
name of nothing is " Nuffin," and not Reading 
Station or the good ship Nancy Lee. As for 
Poggin, if you mention cake to him in an 
encouraging manner, and then present him 
with an imaginary piece on a pretence plate, 
you simply ask for trouble. 

And so on to the third object, a second 
pocket having yawned to admit the cooking 
stove. No wonder it was difficult to identify ! 
Even when held in the hand Cassandra's 
parasol, reversed by some wind of misfortune, 

104 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

is rather confusing. But it yields to scrutiny 
though not to attempted adjustment. It is an 
awkward thing for a pocket in its inside-out 
condition. 

At the greenhouse door there is a sudden 
memory of the tomatoes and of instructions 
that the shoots which grow in all the angles 
have to be pinched off daily so that the plants 
may achieve full vigoui*. The walk therefore 
is suspended and a quiet half -hour of woik is 
begun. In parenthesis it may be observed 
that a finger and thumb of reasonable size 
could find more satisfactory employment than 
trying to grasp the lesser of these shoots! 
They are so minute that a microscope and 
forceps might with advantage be kept in every 
tomato house. 

The more visible of the things having been 
abolished, the eye wanders round the green- 
house and settles on the tank. Is there any 
water in it? If not, it might be useful to fill 
it up. There is some water, or anyhow some 
liquid, in it, a foot of unpleasant quality. 

105 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

And there is something else in it too, a — what 
is it? Can it be? Where is the rake? The 
rake has to be fetched from the tool-house 
and then, very gingerly, the corpse of some 
small animal is extracted, with a careful hold- 
ing of the breath until the grisly object is safely 
outside in the fresher air. What a shame! 
How we should have loved that dear little 
puppy. Who on earth could have drowned 
it in the gieenhouse tank? It is a scene of 
mourning and wrath. 

And then presently comes a sense of some- 
thing missing. What is missing? Why, it is 
a smell! That object has no such effluviimi 
as should accompany a puppy drowned this 
fortnight or more. Sniff! There is a sort of 
weedy odour, but nothing resembling the 
mouse which was in the cupboard just outside 
the nursery. There is somethmg unnatural 
about this. Slowly it dawns upon the investi- 
gator that here is no flesh and blood puppy at 
all events. And at last the secret is out. 
This is the fluffy dog which Father Christmas 

io6 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 

brought to Poggin and which became an 
absentee almost at once. All sorts of theories 
were invented to account for it — they had to 
be, for it was the most delightful fluffy dog you 
ever saw — the most likely being that Poggin 
had thrown it out of his perambulator durmg 
a morning walk. Here at last is the murder 
out. The fluffy dog went into the tank 
months ago and only now is the body dis- 
covered. The fluff, of course, is almost gone 
and the object looks as much like a real 
drowned puppy as any model could. 

If only we were not at the sea what a first- 
class Enquiry we would have about this. It 
is worse than the horse in the pond, much. 

But one comfort comes out of it all. The 
garden is not quite so empty as at first 
appeared. Its tidiness is not too much for 
tolerance. Only a little bit of it has been 
explored, and two pockets and two hands are 
pretty well occupied. Perhaps, before pro- 
ceeding further, it would be as well to fetch 
the barrow. 

107 



IX 

THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

WE have now assembled seventy-two cow- 
ries, which, as there have been only 
two really assiduous collectors, is not bad. 
Besides, the cowrie veins were worked pretty 
hard last year when Guy only visited the Bay 
of Delights, and the Atlantic does not seem 
to have made due preparations for Penelope 
and Poggin so far as renewed stores of those 
treasurable shells go. Perhaps it has had 
other things to do, what with the Armistice, 
the Paris Conference, and other distractions. 
But it has not failed in the matter of shrimps, 
crabs, and handy pieces of seaweed. These 
things are good and plenty. There are also 
prawns, and a sprinkling of highly valuable 
fishes with big heads, while of shells which you 
label "various" there are ample stores. So 
we have no cause to blame the Atlantic, 

io8 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

expecially as Poggin is content with "any old 
thing" that is wet and flaps, while Penelope 
is not addicted to very patient searching. If 
she does not find a cowrie in the first handful, 
she changes her mind and collects something 
else, something which she does find. 

What we call the shell beach lies close to 
the first boat, a strange old emblem which 
must have been sitting where it is for years, on 
a rock well beyond the reach of high tide. The 
seams gape with antiquity and when it last 
navigated the bay is beyond conjecture. Still 
it gives the right touch to the surroundings. 
You ought always to have a boat at the 
seaside. Besides it is a good landmark. If 
you tell people that at 3 p.m. you will be bath- 
ing in the shrimp pool, and that the best way 
to get to the shrimp pool is by the first boat 
and down the steps, then they can always be 
sure of keeping the appointment. For 
example, Peter and Barbara have an engage- 
ment to a mutual splashing match in the 
shrimp pool this very afternoon and they may 

109 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

oi may not find it convenient to come by way 
of the first boat. Anyhow Miss Dunsleigh 
will come by that route, for it saves walking 
thiough the loose sand, and the road winds 
round from her house, past the other house 
which is called Apartments, the yard where 
the motor-bicycle is always being cleaned, and 
the big iron boiler thing which is always ftill 
of sprmg water, to the first boat. Miss Dim- 
sleigh is a very kind lady who came to the 
rescue at that crisis in our affairs when it was 
discovered that Teddy had been left behind at 
The Furlongs. Ersatz Teddy, as some people 
call him, has saved the party from being quite 
incomplete. But he goes about mostly imder 
Penelope's arm. Guy does not take very 
much notice of him — ^he is too well preserved 
to be quite the same. 

It is very difficult to give a coherent 
chronicle of our doings at the Bay of Delights. 
There are so many of them, and they crowd 
so upon one another's heels that life is a per- 
fect rush. You might just as well try to count 

no 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

the sparkles on the wavelets when the midday 
sun and the light west wind strike on the blue 
sea. We live almost entirely out of doors, 
and we begin before breakfast with an inter- 
esting half -hour in Mrs. Dean's garden col- 
lecting bumet moths, meadow browns, and 
little blues. A delightful place, Mrs. Dean's 
garden, a rectangle of grass with a wall 
between it and the road and a terrace between 
it and the sitting-room where we live. Poggin 
takes useful exercise getting up and down the 
three steps from the terrace. Considering 
that he negotiates each step by sitting on it he 
is pretty expeditious in descending. Coming 
up he goes on all fours, which is quicker still. 
But sometimes he does not come up, and in 
that case you may be pretty siire that he has 
made his way round to the farmyard at the 
back of the house, or at any rate to the wooden 
gate which leads to it. Should that happen 
to be open, he finds pigs and hens, and calves, a 
dog, mud, and other dispellers of ennui. 
He has to be fetched immediately. 

Ill 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

But the announcement of breakfast dispels 
all regrets, even about the pigs, for we are 
always extiemely anxious to eat something 
here. The sea air and the strenuous life give 
us a gnawing in our insides at frequent inter- 
vals. When you see Poggin, spoon in hand, 
taking stock of the porridge, fish, bread, butter, 
jam, and any other possibilities with a serious 
countenance and wondering whether there will 
be enough, you imderstand why his two chins 
threaten to develop into three. We are a 
little nervous about that, for it was not 
intended that a seaside holiday should have 
such an effect. People want building-up, it is 
true, but not fortifying roimd about. 

After breakfast the procession is formed and 
all the necessaries are collected. The big 
shrimping net, a jam jar with a string handle 
for carrying, two little baskets, paddling out- 
fits, changes of raiment, towels, the where- 
withal to sustain life at ii A.M., all these 
things are either put into the perambulator 
(a hired conveyance with an imcertain wheel 

112 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

which wobbles) with Poggin, or committed to 
various hands, and so we start. 

The procession turns out of the garden gate 
sharp to the right and proceeds along a curly 
road between low dusty hedges as far as Miss 
Dunsleigh's house. It is just possible that she 
may be in the gaiden and then there is the 
off-chance of a biscuit or a bit of chocolate — 
Miss Dunsleigh has a very good idea of what 
people want who are going to spend a morning 
on the beach. Soon afterwards we leave the 
road, and take a sandy lane to the left which 
leads downhill in about thirty yards to the 
edge of the beach. There is always an excit- 
ing incident halfway because the perambulator 
has to be got across the tiny stream which 
makes its way down the middle of the path. 
Somehow this stream has acquired a bad 
name, why, it is not quite clear. Penelope 
elevates her small nose when she looks at it, 
exclaiming, "Jains," in an offended manner. 
But it is much too small to have anything to 
do with a drainage system, so it is likely that 
^ 113 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Penelope is misinformed. A little lower down 
the beach the thread of fresh water loses itself 
in the sand, being no more than a line of visible 
dampness. The same thing is noticeable with 
another little stream, almost a tiny brook, 
which runs into the middle of the bay. This 
is disappointing because we should like to have 
a proper estuary with a bore and eels in it. 

Once across the so-called drain stream we 
have only a few yards to go and we are at the 
tent. This is a home from home to us, and 
here we take our al fresco repasts, change our 
clothes when necessary, and take shelter if it 
rains. When you open the flap in front and 
look in, the tent seems an unfurnished sort of 
place, just a sandy floor diversified by small 
bits of driftwood or dried seaweed. But if 
you will have the goodness to dig a bit with 
your hands you will find all sorts of treasures, 
three spades and three buckets, for instance, a 
spare jam jar, one of Poggin's socks — ^mislaid 
yesterday, — two small shrimping nets, a 
paddling towel (the same colour as the sand), 

114 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

several small pairs of sand-shoes, and so on. 
For we are more artful than we look, and when 
we don't want the trouble of carrying things 
home in the evening, we just bury them in the 
soft sand. Nobody would think of digging 
for them, so they are quite safe. Sometimes 
indeed they are too safe for even we cannot 
find them. 

One night it blew half a gale from the west, 
and properly it made the windows rattle. 
When you are snug in bed it is thrilling to hear 
the wind whistling rotind the house and the 
heavy beat of the rollers as they thimder up 
the bay. It is an adventure to go to sleep to 
such a lullaby. But next morning there was 
still more of an adventure, for when we got to 
the beach, behold, there was no tent at all, 
only a heap of sand. The storm had not 
only blown the tent down but also buried it, 
and Mr. Dean and one of his men had to come 
and dig it up again. We had a terrible time 
finding all our belongings that morning. It is 
not certain that everything was found. For 

115 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

instance, the matchbox containing a bumet 
moth, a caterpillar, and two leaves, has gone 
astray. Guy is not conscious of having buried 
it in the tent, but he has looked everywhere 
else in vain. 

The tent, now re-established, stands at the 
foot of the sand-hills and fifty yards from the 
beach proper, that is to say from the point 
where the sand begins to be firm and hard. 
At low-water the actual sea is a long way 
beyond that, three hundred yards or more. 
But you need never worry about the distance, 
because on each side of the bay there is a reef 
of rocks, and they provide all that you want 
in the way of water. There are pools of all 
shapes and sizes, from the big shrimping pool 
where we bathe to the tiny basin in which 
Penelope systematically plies her net in the 
belief that it ought to contain a shrimp. It 
doesn't, but it is a nice easy place to fish. So 
far her contribution to the joint bag has not 
been extensive. A dubious-looking green 
worm about an inch long, a leech-like creature, 

ii6 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

has been her chief original capture. But she 
is fairly skilled at re-capturing tiny dabs or 
insignificant bullheads which others have 
released in little sand-pools. It is thought 
that she cherishes a hope of persuading one of 
these minute creatures to take to life ashore 
by gradually accustoming it to absence from 
water. There is a good deal of argument 
about it from time to time. 

Guy has caught one or two shrimps, several 
crabs, and a dab or two, and he has had one 
very exciting morning with a conger eel of 
fully eight inches which slithered up and 
down one of the ledge pools pursued by a net 
and ecstatic shouts. Several times it seemed 
as though the eel must be caught, but it always 
wriggled away at the last moment. Finally it 
got into some crack in the rock whence nothing 
could dislodge it. There have been a dozen 
tides since then and the conger is probably at 
Land's End by now, but Guy's invariable 
suggestion, as a first item in the morning's 
proceedings, is "Let's go and catch the eel." 

117 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

He has other matters to attend to also, being 
under contract to take a pearl home with him, 
for presentation to his friend William, who is 
now returned from the war and with whom 
Guy discusses things in general every day in 
the kitchen garden. How the undertaking 
came to be given is not clear, for it is only the 
tail-end of a conversation that has been 
reported. But Guy has certainly committed 
himself to a pearl — indeed he said that there 
would be no difficulty at all about getting one, 
though he was by no means so sure of a crab 
which was also tinder consideration. Other 
things for which plans were laid were a mer- 
maid and a submarine. These, however, were 
not necessarily to be captured and placed in a 
bag. Faithful description by a competent 
and trustworthy witness was all that was 
called for here. Sometimes we think that the 
scarcity of pearls, mermaids, and submarines 
is beginning to wrinkle Guy's brow with 
thought, but it must be some comfort to him 
to know that the far more difficult crab is 

ii8 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

already accounted for. It should encourage 
him. 

The fishing of these rock pools is no feather- 
bed repose. It is real hard and dangerous 
work, for the rocks are either arranged in razor 
edges or, where to a superficial pressure of the 
foot more comfortable, are extremely slippery. 
And so when you step swiftly from the sharp 
knife that threatens to divide sand-shoe and 
foot into halves to the rounded protuberance 
that looks so comfortable, you no more than 
feel its soothing pressure in sliding onward. 
And the next thing is that you are on hands 
and knees on further razor edges, and Penelope 
is hurrying up to get a good view of the Blood. 
For people always bleed somewhere when 
they have come to grief among these rock 
pools. Indeed further stocks of plaister had 
to be procured to meet the constant demand. 
Penelope has a scientific interest in the way 
in which blood flows, though naturally obser- 
vation is less biassed when the precious stream 
emerges from somebody else. If she fetches 

119 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

a tumble herself it is a case of "present com- 
pany excepted." 

As a matter of statistics more blood has 
been shed by others than by Guy, Penelope, or 
Poggin. The further you have to fall the 
worse, of course, is your affair. 

Some of the other people at the Bay of 
Delights rather fight shy of the rock pools. 
Peter and Barbara, for instance, whose tent 
stands some twenty yards away from ours, 
spend much more time in ascending the sand- 
dimes at the back of it and then either rolling 
or sliding down their smooth surfaces. That 
is a very admirable entertainment also. There 
is less obvious fascination about the pastime 
of the Bucket Baby, who may be seen any 
morning or afternoon conveying water from 
the shrimp pool to the sand beside it. She 
does nothing else, nothing at all, and a well- 
found spade lies unused behind her. She has 
been accused of being a great-granddaughter 
of Danaiis, whoever he was. 

The Bucket Baby is rather hard to under- 

I20 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

stand. Poggin, especially, who is her junior 
by a matter of perhaps six months, surveys 
her proceedings with open wonder. She is 
apparelled for almost any emergency up to 
twelve inches deep, at a pinch thirteen, and 
yet she never goes in above her ankles. So 
she has sea-room to fill half a bucket, she is 
amply content. Now Poggin cannot be 
apparelled for emergencies — he can only be 
disrobed. The ordinary paddling gear is no 
good in his case because it is devised for pad- 
dling, not for sitting down. And the first thing 
he does with water is to sit down in it, wearing 
his broadest smile and beating with his hands 
on either side. His friend and coeval, 
Macpherson, (he of the reddish hair) is, we 
imderstand, of much the same mind. They 
are to abandon compromises and bathe to- 
gether the first afternoon that it is considered 
warm enough for a prolonged immersion. 
Macpherson is not quite so round as Poggin — 
these Scotsmen are a bony lot — and it may be 
that he would feel the cold. Poggin does not 

121 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

seem to do so. Long after Penelope is blue 
and Guy shivering, Poggin is rubicund from 
ear to ear. What he loves best is to rim down 
to the real sea and to plant himself in the path 
of the seventh wave. That makes a person 
properly wet, also any other persons who may 
be in pursuit, which naturally adds to the 
pleasure of it all. Should he, by the way, be 
in normal outdoor costimie and not apparelled 
for any form of water sports, he testifies his 
dissatisfaction, if opportunity offers, by lying 
down flat in the deepest place he can find. 

We have here three elements, air, water, and 
sand, and the third is perhaps the most 
prominent. It fills not only our shoes and 
stockings but our whole lives. Towels, 
sponges, hairbrushes, books, tobacco pouches, 
pipes, work-boxes, pockets — sand invades 
everything. And you never know where you 
are with it. For instance, a week ago come 
Tuesday Peter was for doing a deed of heroism 
to inspire Guy, whose bathing is rather a 
paltry business. He would show that a fellow 

122 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

can wet his head and still remain calm. Un- 
happily the exhibition did nothing to 
encourage Guy to follow suit. For the 
bucket, thanks to Barbara's unobtrusive spade 
work, held not plain water but sand-soup. 
And so when Peter with fine gestures emptied 
it over his own head, the result was, as they 
say, "very otherwise." It unsettled even 
Peter's convictions. Guy shuddered. But 
Poggin laughed with great heartiness. He 
sees that sort of joke at once. 

We eat a good deal of sand, of course. Our 
mid-morning repast and our afternoon tea, 
being consumed on the beach, are always 
sandy. But the taste of a thing is not 
impaired thereby and if, as the old Malter 
said, "you don't chaw too close" a gritty 
quality in the food is hardly noticed. Some 
people are more particular than others. Pene- 
lope one day found a bit of cake which had 
been inadvertently buried in the tent with 
the buckets, but she made no finicking com- 
plaints. On the contrary, she returned hearty 

123 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

thanks to a bountiful Providence and ate the 
cake at once. But the Httle dark boy — ^we 
think his name is Izaak but we are not quite 
sure — ^who dropped half a bun yesterday 
morning, though he said the accident mattered 
nothing, carefully washed his half -bun in the 
shrimping pool for all that. It must have 
acquired a curious new taste. Izaak, if that 
be his name, seems none the worse, we are 
glad to see, and he wears as flourishing a face 
as either Ephraim or Manasseh. So it evi- 
dently doesn't matter which way you eat your 
bun. 

Sometimes, when all otir clothes except one 
set are a-drying or when it seems too cold 
and windy for the beach, we make a party of 
pleasure and visit the cave, or the second boat, 
or even walk round the headland. But here 
Poggin cannot accompany us, perambulators 
being forbidden beyond the cliff gate where 
the little garden is. It is much too thrilling a 
place for perambulators, which are apt to nm 
light-headedly down steep places. People 

124 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

without wheels, however, are allowed to go 
there if they hold tight on to other people. 

The cave is a mysterious place which 
might, it is thought, shelter a mermaid — ^it is 
fully big enough, and there is quite a deep 
pool at its mouth which always holds water 
even at low tide. In the pool is a large green 
crab, but no mermaid has been seen so far. 
Perhaps she only comes after high spring tides. 
We have all been photographed at the cave's 
mouth, and we have learnt the elements of 
ducks and drakes (a most seductive exercise) 
with the aid of the pool which is waveless 
and well adapted thereto. 

The climb down to the cave is helped by a 
set of roughly cut steps. The climb back 
from the cave is hindered by the vanishing 
of the said steps. If it was not Devonshire 
and the twentieth century we should have said 
that it was some sort of Lorelei business, 
luring people down to the cave with hopes of a 
mermaid and then taking away the path by 
which they came. Being Devonshire and 

125 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

19 19 we have come to the conclusion that on 
departing one always goes for what looks like 
the first step and isn't, so missing what doesn't 
look like the first step and is. You can get up 
the wrong way, but it is uncertain what would 
happen if a mermaid or a big crab were in 
pursuit. 

There are more steps, and much more 
important ones, leading down to the second 
boat. This is the effective shipping of the 
district and it has a delightful little railway of 
its own on which it runs from the higher cliff 
to the deep water in the rock gulley . We have 
not seen it running, but we are assured that it 
sometimes does so in the calm weather. The 
gulley provides what sea anglers call a 
"station." We have used it as such twice. 
We nearly caught a crab, one of the good eat- 
ing kind, but he let go his hold just as we had 
decided how he should be cooked. It was a 
sad business. 

Beyond the second boat is the headland, a 
curved bluff of short slippery grass, with 

126 



THE BAY OF DELIGHTS 

masses of bright thrift by the upper path, 
and low gorse bushes dotted about. The 
lower path winds giddily round by an edge 
which goes sheer down to black rocks. 
Strengthless heads are better on the upper 
path. And anyhow you can see all you want 
to from there, the grim dark sea breaking in 
white foam on the fierce coast, the gulls 
wheeling above, the evening sky paling to 
pink, and perhaps a small black ship afar off 
sailing away to the Happy Isles. 

Having walked and watched on the Head- 
land awhile, we turn homewards with minds 
intent on that long table on which Mrs. Dean 
is even now spreading good things. We can 
never stay up here long without remembering 
that table. For the air between sea and sky 
is like knives and forks. 

And afterwards when the good things are 
all finished and properly bestowed, the mem- 
ory of that air is like pillows. We burn no 
midnight oil at the Bay of Delights, we light 
not even a twilight taper. Young and old 

127 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

alike, we are asleep ere Hesperus looks in at 
our windows. For what a blessing is this 
sleep, dreamless and lulled by the murmur of 
the western sea, after all those years when 
sleep was but a tissue of imeasy memories — 
and waking was a return to war. 



128 



X 

FROM A DIARY OF TRAVEL 

"/^H, dear, we're coming to Midminster 
^^ and there are sure to be a lot of people 
getting in. Let's crowd up a bit. Now, 
Penny, you sit on that suitcase and look as 
tall as you can. Guy, you — Penny, will you 
sit still? No, you don't want to see the cow. 
There wasn't a cow, and if there was it's left 
behind long ago. No, Guy, she didn't pinch 
you, and there's no call for you to correct your 
sister. You're a bad little boy yourself. I 
put you on the tea basket, and you've got to 
stay there. You've got to look ferocious out 
of the window to keep all those everybodies 
out. What's ferocious? Oh, it's . . . 
it's . . . Why, it's what Mr. Nobody looks 
like, or the Lion Man. Yes, that'll do very 
well. Frown a bit more and show your teeth. 
No, Penny, you can't be both of them. All 
9 129 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

right, you be the Lion Man then. Wave your 
mane. Yes, roar if you like. Poggin be 
Satan? Good idea! Pass him over. Now 
Woggins look your horridest. What about 
tying a handkerchief round his head? Then 
they'll think he's got mumps. I'm not insult- 
ing him. If he will eat so much . . . We're 
coming in now. Keep it up, children. Penny 
get back on the suitcase immediately. Guy, 
this is the side we stop at. Penny, if you 
don't ... 7 don't know what he's crying 
for: doesn't like the black houses, I think. 
But it'll do as well as Satan. Howl away, 
Woggins. Oh, confound. ... 

Yes, they're sending a tea-basket out. And 
the bottle of water. Oh, I think there's plenty 
of time. No, I must wait for the basket. 
Here don't shut that door. Hi, you there. 
Miss — Madam — tea basket — Hi — Hi — come 
on, we're off — do hurry up. Thanks, thanks. 
Catch hold. Oh, I heg your pardon, sir. Guy, 
will you stop wandering about the carriage? 

130 



FROM A DIARY OF TRAVEL 

We're going to have something more to eat 
now. No, Penny, you finished all the straw- 
berries between you. Squashy ones? They 
went out of the window. Yes, no doubt, and 
what would you look like now? Excuse my 
reaching across you, sir. Bottle only half 
full? Well, they must wait till we get to 
Sixborough. There'll be time to fill it again 
there. Here you are, Woggins, you needn't 
make such a row. No, Penny, bread and 
butter first. All right, Guy, hold it carefully 
and don't spill it. No, it's not Poggin'smug, 
it's yours. Someone fill Woggin's mouth 
for him. You'd think he hadn't seen food for 
a week. I'm so sorry, sir, I hope it hasn't 
splashed over you. Penny, if you can't hold 
a mug without spilling it you won't get any 
more. Hullo, stopping again? It must be 
Sixborough. 

I thought that young man would find it a bit 
too crowded. He only got in out of sheer 
obstinacy, confound him. We're all right till 

131 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

we get there now, thank goodness. No, we're 
not there yet. Not for an hour. Look here, 
Guy, you look out of this side and count horses 
and Penny look out of the other and count 
pigs. Yes, Woggins, isn't that fun? Pull it 
down like that and let it go whop, like that. 
These spring blinds — did um hurt urn's finger 
then? Oh the poor wee Woggins! All right 
you look after him. Of course there are pigs, 
plenty of them. You go on looking out. 
There's one with a curly tail a bit further on. 
Well, you'll get one with a curly tail your 
side, too, if you look hard. No, it isn't an hour 
yet. Come on, Woggins, then, only if you 
pinch your finger again don't blame me. You 
leave Woggins alone, Guy. This is his blind, 
and we don't want you interfering. Why? 
Because I say so. And don't you forget it No, 
we're not there yet. Well, what did you take 
it away for, you silly little girl? Guy, if you 
slap Penny again you'll get it in the neck. 
Penny, go back to your comer and you'll see a 
white cow. Yes, a donkey too. Yes, very 

132 



FROM A DIARY OF TRAVEL 

likely there will be an elephant, but only if 
you keep a sharp look-out. No, it is not 
an hour yet. You can't wish we were there 
more than I do. Food? Now you're talking. 
Let's have the basket out again. 

I knew Woggins would fall off if you let him 
dance on the seat. Let him have the blind 
again. It comforts him. Yes, we are nearly 
there now. How nearly? As nearly as makes 
no difference. Look, that's the River Thames. 
Look at the boats. Yes, I should say the people 
know we're nearly there. They can probably 
hear us. No, Penny, you can't get out and 
go in a boat. You shall go in a motor car very 
soon. Don't you want to see the garden, and 
William again? Yes, and the toad. Cer- 
tainly you shall see the toad. The lobworm 
too, if he's still there. In another quarter 
of an hotir. No, it isn't a quarter of an hour 
yet. No, not yet. It's thirteen minutes 
now. No, not yet. You do want to get 
there? Yes, we are beginning to realise that, 

133 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Look here, just have a last look out for the 
pig with the curly tail. And you, Penrxy, on the 
other side. All right, Woggins can have 
another go at the blind. Yes, we're nearly 
there now. Only five minutes. No, it's not 
five minutes yet. Count up to ten six times 
over slowly and that will be a minute. Well, 
do it again. A quarter of an hotir late? It 
looks like it. Is there any left? Out with 
the basket then. A biscuit apiece. . . . 

Well, it's a mercy to be home, even if one 
is nearly dead. If the children are half as 
worn out as . . . hullo, where are you off to? 
But it's long past bed-time. You must see 
everything? And the toad? All right, run 
along. Tell Guy that he's not to begin on the 
sand heap to-night, and you are not to play 
in the pond. 



134 



XI 

IN THE ATELIER FURLONG 

" r^LEASE, can I have a pencil? I want to 
■■■ jaw. And some paper." 

"Me too, please." 

"Here you are. Two pieces each. Don't 
break the points." 

"No, Fm drawing here. You go and draw 
on the sofa." 

"Can I have the Field book to jaw on? " 

"All right, take it." 

"Do you know what I'm drawing? I'm 
drawing a mouse." 

"That's good. Give it a curly tail. Hullo, 
Penny, what are you doing? You're not to 
scribble all over the leading article. You 
draw on that paper I gave you." 

"Can I jaw on this old gentleman with the 
beard?" 

135 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

"Who? Oh, Mr. Dunlop. Yes, you can 
draw on him. He's an advertisement." 

"What's an advertisement? I've finished 
my mouse. What shall I draw now?" 

"Oh, draw another mouse." 

" My pencil won't jaw any more. Will you 
cut it with your knife?" 

"Now, don't lean on it so hard this time. 
It isn't a crutch. You've pretty well done in 
poor Mr. Dunlop, haven't you?" 

"What's 'done in'? I'm doing my other 
mouse. Did you know I was doing another 
mouse?" 

" I can do a mouse. At least I could if my 
pencil would jaw. Will you cut it again? " 

"You don't want a pencil, Penny. What 
you want is a crowbar. Now be more careful 
this time." 

" I ' ve finished my other mouse. What shall 
I draw now? Shall I draw Woggins?" 

"Yes, why don't you? Draw him in his 
new hat." 

"How do you draw a hat?" 
136 



IN THE ATELIER FURLONG 

"Put a straight line on top of his head 
and stick a feather in it." 

"7 can jaw a fewer. My pencil's bwoke 
again." 

"Try drawing with the other end. That 
won't break." 

"Woggins has got two legs and two arms. 
Did you know he'd got two legs and two arms? 
Isn't he a funny little boy? " 

"It won't jaw that end. I don't want 
to jaw any more. Can I have the china 
dog?" 

"No, you can't. You know you'd break it. 
I'll sharpen your pencil again. Look here, 
why don't you draw a pig, like this?" 

"Let me see. 7 want to see. Draw a pig 
on my paper." 

"No, you draw a pig for yourself, it's quite 
easy." 

"How many legs has a pig got? I don't 
think I want to draw a pig. I won't tell you 
what I'm going to draw. I'm going to draw 
something very important." 

137 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

"That's right. Give it a curly tail." 

*^ Houses don't have tails! Did you know 
I was drawing a house? That's the chimney. 
Now I shall draw a tree." 

"/ can jaw a tree." 

"Look what Penny's done! She's drawn a 
tree. Isn't she a clever little girl?" 

"Clever little Penny." 

" ArenH I a clever little girl? Can I have 
the china dog now?" 

"Clever isn't the word for you. No, you 
can't have the dog." 

"Well, can I have a piece of chocklate 
then?" 

"Oh, and me. Can we both have a piece? " 

"Which do you like best, Penny, chocolate 
or cake?" 

"I like chocolate and cake. Can I have 
another piece — for Woggins?" 

"You'd eat it. You wouldn't carry it to 
him." 

"Yes, I would, if I could have a piece to eat 
while I carry it." 

138 



IN THE ATELIER FURLONG 

"If she has another piece, I must have one 
too." 

"I've took it to Woggins. He was very- 
pleased. Can I have the china dog now? " 

"No, Penny, you can't. Come and sit here 
and I'll draw you a dog." 

" Draw me one too." 

' 'All right , you come and sit on the other side . ' ' 

"There's his eye, and his tail. Isn't that a 
nice dog?" 

"He's rather like a pig, isn't he?" 

"Pig? No, here's a pig. Now you see 
the difference." 

"Do another pig. No, do a cow — with a 
crumpled horn. What's that you're doing?" 

"What do you think it is?" 

"It's a little boy. What little boy is it? 
Is it Woggins? Now do one of Penny." 

"And one of Guy." 

"There you are, all three of you, just like 
life." 

"Do Teddy too." 

"And the pram. And Nanny. And the 
139 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

house. And the manure heap. And a hen 
with an egg. Why is the hen going away 
from the egg? Who's going to have the egg? " 

"You watch and see." 

"Look, Penny, what's coming after the egg. 
A rat, or is it a mouse? Oh, and there's a boy 
running. Who's that boy? Will he get the 
egg? What will he do with the egg? Will he 
eat it? Do rats eat eggs? Why do they? 
Now draw Mr. Nobody." 

"And Satan." 

"I can't draw them, I'm afraid." 

"Why can't you?" 

"Father Christmas wouldn't like it." 

"/ can jaw Satan, if my pencil wasn't 
bwoke." 

"Yes, and do you know? Penny drawed 
Satan all by herself and Nanny said, *Is that a 
tree you've drawed?' Wasn't it funny?" 

"An' I jawed the Lion Man too. But he's 
good now and wouldn't hurt little children at 
all, Nanny says. Can I have the china dog 
now?" 

140 



IN THE ATELIER FURLONG 

"By Jove, it's your bed-time now. Here's 
Nanny coming to fetch you." 

"I don't want to go to bed." 

"And I want the china dog." 

"Listen. If you're very good children — are 
you going to be my good children? " 

"If what?" 

"Well, if you're very good children and go 
straight up to bed and don't make a fuss, I 
shouldn't be surprised ..." 

' * Surprised what ? * ' 

"Well, I shouldn't be surprised if the 
fairies ..." 

"Fairies what?" 

"Well, if the fairies brought you each a 
small parcel in the night." 

"Will they? Come along Penny." 

"Aren't you going to say good-night?" 

"Oh, good night. I'll be upstairs first." 

"No, Im//." 



141 



XII 

PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

THE other day Penelope was observed to be 
acting in an unusual manner. For one 
thing she was quiet, which is a benefit not 
expected on a wet afternoon when it draws on 
towards tea-time. As a rule on such occasions 
she joins, nay leads, the rest of the company 
in uproar. Being quiet, therefore, Penelope 
was deemed worth watching. She passed 
furtively, as you might say, from corner to 
comer. When she paused, as she did now and 
then, her lips moved and she made whispering 
noises. Withal, there was an air of subdued 
tritmiph which was intriguing. A natural 
question was asked, but Penelope paid no 
attention. Instead she sidled off to the toy 
cupboard and apparently whispered into the 
keyhole. 

It fell to Guy to offer an explanation. 
142 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

"Penny's being Satan, and she's teaching 
people to do wrong. And I'm Mr. Nobody," 
he added, "taking all the things away." He 
held, in fact, a waste paper basket which was 
half full of miscellaneous property, and also 
was patrolling the nursery without osten- 
tation. These are regrettable habits of Mr. 
Nobody, whose doings, as has perhaps been 
made manifest already, are always surrounded 
with mystery. As for Satan, we naturally 
know a good deal about him. Who doesn't? 
But that he should be regarded as a model is 
rather a new and disturbing idea. It may be 
necessary to invoke the aid of Father Christ- 
mas in the matter; the rebuking of sin will 
become difficult if sin becomes a fashionable 
indoor amusement on its own account. 

For among the Beings who regulate our 
waking lives Father Christmas is still easily 
pre-eminent. He is revered not merely as a 
working hypothesis but as an ascertained 
fact. Since that never-to-be-forgotten even- 
ing when a figure all resplendent in scarlet, 

143 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

with snowy beard, long black boots, and 
much delightfiil luggage, came through the 
trapdoor from the roof with a rimibling yet 
cheery "Well, children, here we are at last," 
we have naturally referred all doubtful and 
difficult questions to his arbitrament. This 
Satan-business comes emphatically within his 
scope. 

Father Christmas may be trusted to deal 
with it as he dealt with other kindred difficul- 
ties. The coupon method proved very suc- 
cessful on the whole, though we got off rather 
more easily than we feared might be the case. 
No less effective was the other up-to-date 
device which is called "To-day's Grave Warn- 
ing." It was plain that he had studied his 
newspapers to good purpose and learnt how to 
harrow erring souls. "I have it from official 
sources" — thus the worthy Father — "that by 
next Christmas there is likely to be a serious 
shortage in string and brown paper, and so 
only for exceptionally good children will it 
be possible to make up any parcels worth 

144 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

mentioning." Then followed a list of doings 
which might tend to emphasise the shortage, 
and we listened to it with earnest attention. 

Nor have we wholly forgotten, even though 
months have elapsed. Does not the wonder- 
ful Letter hang on the nursery wall with its 
further injimctions towards good behaviour? 
For we composed a letter of thanks after the 
visit, posted it in the attic imder the trap -door, 
and in due course received a reply measuring, 
30 in. X 24 in. It was written in fine, large 
letters like print, embellished with wonderful 
drawings of holly, pointing hands, Christmas 
Palace, plum-puddings, and other delights. 
And it had a great red seal and was signed 
"William Christmas." When we look at it 
(the glass for framing it cost the eyes of your 
head) we always think of parcels and the grave 
warning, and so it hangs on the south wall a 
perpetual influence for betterment. 

We have another memorial of the great day 
in the shape of a most lifelike photograph. It 
seems that the fairies concealed themselves 

145 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

in the attic somewhere and photographed the 
scene when Father Christmas had stepped 
down from the trap-door. In the foreground 
is Poggin dancing Hke David before the Ark 
and somewhat to the right Guy and Penelope 
stand exactly like good little children. Father 
Christmas is a heroic figure about ten feet high 
to the left. 

When Uncle Tertius saw this photograph 
he rather disparaged the work of the fairies. 
"It's not bad," he said, "but it's rather out of 
focus and that line could have been got out, 
I think. These fakes take a bit of doing." 
And he ran his finger down a sort of smudgy 
curtain between Father Christmas and the 
rest of the company. Which, we thought, was 
slightly mean of Uncle Tertius, especially as he 
wasn't there. For, though it had been fully 
intended that he should be at the ceremony, 
and though he was certainly sitting at tea in 
the dining-room half an hour before it and as 
certainly appeared at supper in the same room 
an hour or so after it, when the great moment 

146 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

came there was no Uncle Tertius anywhere. 
A theory emerged afterwards, which was that 
he had gone to sleep on the sofa in the study 
and so forgotten all about the matter. At the 
time, fortimately, we forgot all about Uncle 
Tertius in face of greater attractions, so the 
defection did not mar the hilarity of the 
proceedings, as they put it. 

Not quite so well realised a figure, but highly 
respected, is Mrs. Christmas, whose opinion is 
final on all matters relating to what people 
ought to eat. She was good enough to send 
some very acceptable parcels in Father Christ- 
mas's pack. Then there is Father Christ- 
mas's nephew. Uncle Easter, who is also very 
highly esteemed. We just got a glimpse of 
him early in the morning. He wore a vener- 
able top hat, a good deal of reddish whisker, a 
very heavy overcoat with a striking check 
pattern, and white flannel trousers. He was 
evidently a person of pronounced individuality, 
but we only had a back view of him as he 
hobbled away down the garden path. He is a 

147 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

good deal younger than Father Christmas, but 
he keeps up the family tradition nobly, and 
the basket he left was undeniably well 
furnished. So, indeed, does a distant cousin 
whom we have not seen, a very kind elderly 
lady named Aunt Bank Holiday. She sent 
by carrier "with kind regards" a trailer, a 
small perambulator, and a large well-painted 
india-rubber ball, so her influence for good is 
considerable. 

The strivings of this excellent family have 
hitherto availed a good deal against the works 
of Satan, Mr. Nobody, and the Lion Man 
who make a sort of combination of badness 
in the affairs of life. The Lion Man began by 
being a harmless fiction. It was necessary 
to keep Guy from entering a toy shop and it 
was represented to him that an aged nomad, 
to whose battered hat, unkempt beard, and 
generally wild appearance he had previously 
taken exception near the station, was probably 
seated within. The nomad was simimed up as 

148 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

undoubtedly "horrider than a wild lion," 
and so he took permanent shape as the Lion 
Man. What he does is not quite clear, but he 
must aid and abet Mr. Nobody in general 
nefariousness. And he is certainly a danger- 
ous person to have about, because even 
though his attributes be vague, it takes no 
great effort to invent things that he might do. 
It would, for instance, be certainly in keeping 
with his character to pursue the smallest 
chickens with a stick, or to let out the two 
broody hens from their place of detention and 
chase them back into the fowl-run. While 
at the same time Mr. Nobody is emptying the 
water-troughs or opening the pig-sty door, 
and Satan is possibly breaking an o^gg (market 
price fivepence) or striking stolen matches 
among the straw and hay, we realise the 
advantage of having the ' strong Christmas 
combination on the side of goodness. 

The fairies have already been spoken of, and 
there is not very much more to be said about 
them, except that they seem to have started 

149 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

a kennel. Penelope only a day or two ago 
discovered this. She came in full of a fairy 
dog which she had just seen. It was a dear 
little dog — so big — and she was quite sure "it 
wouldn't bite nobody." Confirmation of the 
vision came later in the day when a dead 
rabbit was found quite close to the place where 
it had been seen. The rabbit had a wound at 
the back of its neck. Further confirmation 
was received next morning, for the little door 
of the fowl house was inadvertently left open 
and in the night Elizabeth, doyenne of the 
company, passed sadly away. Her mangled 
remains were eloquent of fairy dogs and their 
ways. We cannot agree with Penelope that 
these interesting little animals do not bite, 
and we think the fairies ought to have muzzles 
for them. 

There is one more new thing about the 
fairies which is to be recorded, and that is the 
"blacking-stone." Here is Penelope's ac- 
count of it, reported verbatim : 

"It's got blacked with the blacking-stone, 
150 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

and the fairies brought it, cos Fd been such 
a good Httle girl, and they put it on my face, 
and William got it from them, and they 
brought it, and William done it, and my hair 
too, and it's a blacking-stone, and it was the 
water fairies, and Guy found it, and then I 
rubbed it over me, and Guy done it too, and 
William said it was the fairies, and it was a 
blacking-stone, and Nanny wasn't there, and 
we rubbed it on Woggins's head, and it was 
all black, and the road-fairies put the sand 
over Guy, and Woggins sat down, and the 
fairies have took it away now." 

Penelope always takes some time to get 
started on an explanation, as she likes to 
arrange her thoughts in a good roimd shape 
before giving utterance to them, but once 
started she gives plenty of details and alter- 
natives in order that people may not be in any 
doubt as to what has happened. So we feel 
that we know a good deal about the blacking- 
stone now. The fact that men have been tar- 
ring the road outside the garden helps us to 

151 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

imderstand how complexions suffered such a 
change. But the road-fairies are newcomers 
and we have not previously made their ac- 
quaintance. We are a little apprehensive as 
to the appearance of other hitherto imrevealed 
tribes, connected with the rubbish heap, per- 
haps, or even with the corner where the man- 
ure is bestowed. It may be that Father 
Christmas will have to look into these mani- 
festations also. 

Mother Goose, who was at one time in good 
repute and well established in Father Christ- 
mas's circle, has rather lost caste, owing to an 
unfortunate coincidence. Old Nanny when 
on the point of departure said she thought it 
possible that Mother Goose might come to 
supervise the nursery for a while. Owing to 
the fact that as a general rule Nannies had 
adopted the profession of arms and were now 
called Sergeants, it seemed improbable that 
anyone else would follow Old Nanny unless 
Mother Goose "obliged." And then, most 
unfortunately, we came on a picture of Mother 

152 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

Goose in the Ring of Roses book and, behold, 
she wore a determined expression and held an 
efficient stick in her hand. That put a stopper 
on Mother Goose, and for a time she was 
regarded with considerable suspicion. In fact 
she is hardly restored to favour yet. It will 
require a good snowstorm to re-establish her. 
A white mantle covers many a doubtful 
disposition. 

The world of course holds "all sorts," as 
proverbial philosophy bids us to remember, 
and we should not on the whole be surprised 
to meet any of them anywhere. Giants, for 
instance, are to be reckoned with. It has been 
settled that the measure of a giant is his ability 
to look over the walnut tree without standing 
on tip-toe. The modern giant is fortimately 
a well-disposed individual of blameless habits, 
and he is all right so long as you do not get 
trodden on by accident. Thanks to his 
carrying-power, he might be induced to bring 
another load of sand in one of his pockets now 
that the old sand-heap is getting worked-out. 

153 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Or he might be turned on to other useful 
works, such as diverting the Httle stream from 
the far side of the meadow so that it should 
run through the garden. We could, in fact, 
do very well with a giant about the place. 

Penelope in particular has some heavy lift- 
ing which she wants done. There is an 
enormous stone which covers some mystery 
in the stable yard and she often stands medi- 
tating on the possibilities that lie beneath. 
What she expects to find there is not revealed, 
but it evidently irks her that there should be 
a big stone, with possibly something under 
it, and she unable to do anything in the 
matter. Lesser problems she has been able to 
solve unaided. Only a day or two ago she 
was heard singing a sort of aria to herself as 
she came round from the kitchen door to the 
lawn. It ran as follows : "The sun's out, little 
Penny's out, two jains is took up, little 
Penny's took 'em up." The drains were the 
iron gratings from either side of the kitchen 
door. She carried them masterfully one in 

154 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

each hand. But the big stone calls undoubt- 
edly for a giant. It is what Homer described 
as a "shameless" stone. 

For our graver hours there are of course 
angels, but we are not intimate with them as 
we are intimate with fairies. We know grate- 
fully that they watch over us in the darkness 
and we sleep soundly under their protection. 
But we do not ask them to bother themselves 
about purely mundane matters. There is 
therefore no clash of functions or confusion of 
spheres. The only moot point is whether 
Father Christmas is an angel or not. He 
possesses so many attributes which qualify 
him for the position that it seems as if he must 
be one. In that case there is one angel at least 
who is bothered about mundane affairs a good 
deal. Control of the property-market in 
itself is a considerable business. 

Though they be not as a rule concerned with 
worldly things like parcels, the angels have 
plenty of work, for their services are in wide 
request. ' * Poor Peggy, ' ' said someone a while 

155 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

back, ' ' out in the dark by herself. " " She's all 
right," said Guy with confidence, "she's got 
her angel." Peggy is the donkey. If an 
angel is concerned with her welfare, moral as 
well as physical, he has his work cut out. For 
Peggy, though not without her good points, is 
of an obstinacy! And she will reduce a rose 
tree to bare bones in the twinkling of an eye, 
when she can get at it. And she knows how to 
get through the wire fence that separates her 
paddock from the garden. 

There is one of our experiences that must be 
related without comment. Indeed comment 
would be impossible. Guy was just turned 
five when he became possessed of a magic car- 
pet — or, perhaps it should be said, when he 
endowed the little black hearthrug in the 
drawing-room with the necessary magic 
properties. He went for his first excursion 
thereon, in due course returned, and related 
his experiences to his Aunt Victoria. * ' I went 
as high as anything," he explained. Enquiry 
showed that this meant higher than the birds, 

156 



PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS 

higher than the aeroplanes, higher even than 
the fleecy clouds. "I went," he said, "as 
high as God's house. * ' And then he concluded 
with a certain emphasis, "I saw Him." 



157 



XIII 
BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

WE are all gone to the Peace, as we have 
agreed to call it in our trouble-saving 
manner — no, not all, for Poggin has stayed at 
home with the Controller. It was feared that 
were he confronted with people in throngs 
and food in heaps, Poggin's self-possession 
would forsake him and so he might behave 
in a manner which after-reflection would find 
regrettable. He passes, therefore, a secluded 
afternoon. 

But the rest of us are gone to the Peace in 
our best attire. Penelope's new blue coat is a 
feature of the celebrations, as was expected. 
There is not very much of it, it is true, but it 
compels respect. Even Penelope agreed that 
it would be well to walk with deconmi for fear 
of motor cars. * ' I mustn't be killed, not in my 
new coat," she admitted. Guy in honour 

158 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

of his new grey flannel suit has agreed to doff 
his braces for the time being. The trouble 
with him has been the acquisition of a fine belt 
with a silver snake in its buckle before he had 
quite got used to the novelty of braces. And 
so for a week or more he has worn both, much 
doubtless to the better sustentation of knicker- 
bockers, but somewhat also to the amusement 
of beholders. Mrs. Grundy herself could sug- 
gest nothing more rigorous. For the Peace 
he has at last been persuaded that a belt will 
suffice. A carefully xmstudied opening of the 
coat will, he anticipates, bring the silver snake 
buckle into prominence. If necessary he can 
say to Penelope in a well-modulated aside, "I 
didn't want a belt and braces. ' ' Then strangers 
will know that this quiet style of dressing is a 
matter of choice, not of necessity. 

The Peace, now that we are arrived and can 
survey it, is a wonderful function. It were 
impossible in mere words of description to do 
justice to its many excitements. Figure to 
yourself- the Squire's house, its big pillared 

159 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

porch gay with flags, its long coping tri- 
umphant with crimson bunting. "What a 
lovely house," exclaims Guy in reverent admir- 
ation. And then having traversed the broad 
gravel sweep and turned the corner you come 
upon a great concourse of long tables, a mighty 
mustering of chairs and benches, a dazzling of 
white napery, a glinting of forks. The big 
verandah is arranged to seat a great company, 
and overflow tables stretch away over the lawn 
too. "Oh," murmurs Penelope, "are we 
going to have tea now?'' But busy ladies 
pay no attention to Penelope. They hurry 
hither and thither with plates and cups and 
jugs. And in the foreground are great wash- 
ing baskets which hold more Cake than we 
imagined possible. Cake for four htmdred! 
And a bit over! What wonder that we look 
back over our shoulders as we are towed 
reluctantly towards the stadiiim. We should 
like to play at Samson this afternoon, the 
contents of the washing baskets being the 
Philistines. 

1 60 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

But there is much to be done ere tea-time 
and our minds are soon diverted by spectacles. 
To the right as you enter the park below the 
terrace is an eager crowd round an enclosure. 
We hurry up to see. Behold a set of ninepins 
almost big enough for giants, and men, aye 
and women too, who in quick succession bowl 
at them with big wooden balls. One after 
another the competitors enter the lists. But 
the ninepins bear a charmed life, and seldom 
does one of them fall. Never do more than 
three lie prone after a bowler has had three 
shots at them. This is a very subtle game, for 
you have to hit the first pin so that it collides 
with the second, which bumps into two more. 
They in their turn, sprawling, carry instability 
afield until the collapse is complete. It seems 
incredible, but wise onlookers assert that a 
well-practised bowler has been known to knock 
all nine pins down with a single ball. If that 
does not happen today it will not be for lack of 
effort. Somewhere in a generous sty not far 
away grunts a fine young porker who is to 
" i6i 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

reward the best score of the competition. 
And so there is a constant stream of bowlers, 
who bowl on determinedly no matter what 
attractions there may be going on in the other 
enclosures. 

These are solid enough, at two shillings, or a 
shilling, or a knife, or a bag — acquisitions very 
comfortable to boys and girls. And for the 
spectators there is much honest mirth. At 
this instant when we reach the end of the long 
course, which is delimited with posts and 
ropes, there is to be seen a row of bulging 
sacks arranged in a line across it some fifty 
yards away. Suddenly a handkerchief waves, 
a voice cries, "Off with you," and the sacks 
begin to struggle into an upright posture. 
From the mouth of each emerges a head 
wearing a broad grin, a frown of determination 
or a fixed glare, as the case may be. And then 
the sacks start on their mad career. This 
way and that they fall. They struggle in 
heaps. They rise to fall again. ' One, in 
despair of perpendicularity, essays rolling in 

162 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

dignified fashion towards the goal. But one 
speeds marvellously forward on shuffling toes. 
So might the waterspout move over the 
swelling sea, or the young lady traverse the 
Mall in the days of hobble skirts. We wipe 
away the tears of laughter and hold our breath. 
For close behind the shuffling sack comes one 
which leaps and bounds as if it had been a 
kangeroo. 

Here is a contest indeed. The struggling 
heaps behind are forgotten in this march of 
intellect, for it is no less. "Go it. Tommy," 
we yell, "Keep it up, Bert." And then, alas, 
the sack called Tommy totters, sways, and 
spreads its length on the ground, and the sack 
called Bert catches the infection of uncertainty 
and sprawls likewise. So we let our breath go 
and laugh painfully some more. The race goes 
to a dark horse who has been progressing so 
cautiously as to be almost unnoticed along 
the right wing. 'Twas ever thus. Sympathy 
goes out to the sturdy sack which has rolled 
full forty yards, and which might have gained 

163 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

third place but for being brought up short by 
the tumbHng match of Tommy and Bert 
which occupies good yards of course. When 
just as you are balanced another sack hurtles 
blindly into you, naturally you have a tum- 
bling match. And it is perhaps most im- 
f ortunate for a party who rolls into the middle 
of it. By the time the scene is over our ribs 
ache with appreciation. 

No other race perhaps quite comes up to the 
sack race in the popular eye, but there are 
others nearly as exciting. The three-legged 
race, for instance, in which pairs of boys are 
yoked together by the ankles, or the wheel- 
barrow race in which the barrow has to pro- 
gress on its hands while the driver holds its 
feet — these be worthy contests not without 
those mishaps which are the salt of a spectacle. 
Then there is an event in which the competi- 
tors have to collect potatoes one at a time from 
different distances. It goes to the first who 
can show six placed well and truly in a little 
heap. Some imfortunates lose their last 

164 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

potato and may be seen wandering dolorously 
about searching for it. Can it be that some 
miscreant has picked up a brace at once for 
the better furnishing of his heap? The imi- 
pires have to keep their eyes well open in this 
event. 

There are races for girls as well as boys, one 
of them being a needle and thread race. In 
this the damsels have to rim to a given spot, 
thread a needle there, and then run back to 
the winning post. The one who sticks the 
needle into the timpire first wins — at least 
that is how it appears to the umpire when the 
line of Amazons gallops down upon him. 
Another popular event is the egg race, in which 
each girl has to carry a china egg in a wooden 
spoon for fifty yards. Very shallow and 
insufficient are the spoons, and all the eggs 
leap about on the grass, whence they must be 
retrieved without the help of fingers. Slow- 
and-sure wins this race, for an egg once 
dropped cannot be easily picked up by 
an excited person. A maiden who trots 

165 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

along very sedately and does not drop the egg 
at all need not fear the more showy racer who 
starts off very fast and then spends many 
seconds among bunkers. On the whole the 
girls make just as good a show as the boys. 
If they do not perhaps rtm quite so fast they 
display a good deal of subtlety in coping with 
difficulties and interpreting rules, as was to be 
expected. 

The weather causes us uneasiness ere the 
children's sports are far advanced. Heavy 
clouds roll up and presently melt into showers. 
It develops into a "droppy" afternoon, and it 
either rains or looks as though it were just 
about to rain all the time. But that does 
not greatly interfere with enjoyment, and it 
diminishes in no wise the enthusiasm with 
which presently we all troop up to the ver- 
andah and take our places at those long 
well-spread tables. Two of us, in particular, 
sit as close as may be to those wonderful wash- 
ing baskets and that unlimited store of cake. 

This is the children's hour, for the grown- 
l66 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

ups are to have their tea afterwards, and a 
crowded hour it is, in every sense of the word. 
Each guest has brought his or her mug — Guy 
has Ship-a-Sailing and Penelope Hen-a-Lay- 
ing, so named from the pictures that adorn 
their sides — and tea is poured into every mug 
from great urns at the ends of the tables. For 
food there is sensible bread-and-butter, 6 in. 
X 6 in. X ^ in., there are sandwiches made 
with green jam and sandwiches made with red 
jam, and lastly there is that noble display 
of cake, white for the small guests, currant- 
speckled for the bigger. It is a great feasting. 

So far as can be seen Guy and Penelope are 
doing full justice to each of the viands in turn, 
and the only thing to distinguish them from 
their neighbours is that Guy has retained 
his hat. (It turns out later that he insisted on 
this as compensation for the missing braces). 
As the only be-hatted little boy at his table he 
is a trifle conspicuous, but he does not seem 
to mind. 

The tea more or less bears out the theory 
167 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

that capacity is in inverse ratio to size. 
Alfred, who looks a doubtful three, eats twice 
as much as nine-year-old Jane who sits next 
him. And Marjorie, who is a probable two, is a 
full piece of cake up on Alfred. A well-ma- 
tured little person is Marjorie, able to say 
"pease" when invited to eat some more, clear 
about the greater attractiveness of red jam, 
and fully aware that an appealing manner is 
worth an extra l\mip of sugar in the mug. 
Also, when urged thereto by her family, 
Marjorie will even go so far as to say "fank 
oo." It is very nearly one person's job keep- 
ing Marjorie supplied. Or perhaps the way 
that she has with her makes it seem so. 

James Arthur is a more difficult subject than 
Marjorie, although he is some months older. 
"Now James Arthur," we say heartily, "what 
shall we have next?" 

"Wow," replies James Arthur, or something 
like that. 

"What did you say? Cake?" 

"Ur." 

1 68 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

"Which? Redjam?" 

"Ee." 

"Here, Cissie, I can't make out what he 
wants. What is it? " 

" Please, sir, he wants some more sugar in his 
tea." 

Wonderful is feminine perception. How 
Cissie divined James Arthur's requirements 
from his utterances, accurately recorded, it is 
impossible to say. But she is quite right. 
Another lump of sugar causes James Arthur to 
beam with content, and this settled he has 
leisure to think of cake as well. And the 
intelligent Cissie is rewarded with red jam. 

There is, so far as observation goes, only one 
tragedy to mar the festival. Henry, a youth 
of James Arthur's age and size, after sitting 
lack-lustre for a space, bursts into wailing. 
He is removed by his sister Ethel, who explains 
the trouble. Henry is, she explains, full to 
the top button and he cannot manage another 
mouthful. And some cruelly kind person has 
put a large new slice of cake on his plate ! Who 

169 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

wouldn't wail in such circumstances? We 
understand and sympathise. Perhaps, if 
Henry takes a bit of a walk, and then comes 
back, he may find that he can do a bit more 
after all. We hope for the best. 

When all the children have reached the top- 
button stage they troop off with their mugs 
to the park and there is a great washing-up of 
plates and re-laying of tables. And then the 
grown-ups assemble for their tea, a more solid 
meal fortified with plates of goodly ham. This 
over, the festivities begin again and there are 
races for old men and young men, for married 
ladies and marriageable daughters, for every- 
one in fact. The most popular victory per- 
haps is in the fifty-yard handicap for men over 
fifty. The competitors have assembled, ten 
or a dozen hearty fellows on the right side of 
sixty, when there totters along to the starting 
point the venerable figure of Granf er Gubbings, 
who, it is said, is as near eighty as makes no 
difference. When the crowd understands that 
Granfer proposes to compete it roars applause. 

170 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

The handicappers get to work and presently- 
one of them conies along and deposits Granfer 
at his station, a good twenty yards in front 
of anyone else. Even so, how shall so ancient 
a man hope to stay the course, with middle- 
age thundering at his heels ! He has much ado 
even to walk to his place, let alone run. But 
Granfer pays no attention to the pitying com- 
ments of the onlookers. Slowly and methodi- 
cally he removes coat and waistcoat, and hands 
them to a proud grandson. Then he takes off 
his hat, and awaits the starting signal. It 
comes, and the runners are off. Gallantly the 
middle-aged men strive neck and neck and it is 
a thoroughly well contested race. There is 
hardly anything in it between Tom Harrison 
and Charlie Naggs, and only by a desperate 
spurt does Tom end up a yard in front, so 
qualifying for second place. As for first place, 
Granfer Gubbings made sure of that some 
time ago. The old man simply "romped 
home," as the descriptive writers say, and 
the rest were nowhere. Granfer Gubbings 

171 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

going to the starting point and Granfer 
Gubbings racing for a first prize of ten shillings 
are strikingly different people. It is a greatly- 
applauded victory, but next time it is likely 
that Granfer will have to start somewhere near 
scratch. 

It would need the pen of a Pindar to do 
justice to the other features of the sports, the 
quarter-mile won by a man over forty, the all- 
fours race with its desperate feats of agility, 
the ladies' events nearly all won by a slim 
young Atalanta in black whose grace of motion 
captured all hearts except those of some of the 
older ladies, the fifty-yard handicap for mar- 
ried ladies which produced six winners, to the 
great disturbance of the timpires before whom 
the claims were shrilly laid, the stroke of 
genius which suggested the allotting of six 
uncut cakes, overplus from tea, in settlement 
of these claims. There were great tugs-of-war 
in which North End pulled over not only 
South End but also the Estate, and in which 
the Married Ladies were too powerful for the 

172 



BREAD AND CIRCUSES 

youthful team captained by Atalanta, a turn- 
ing of tables which held a certain poetic 
justice. 

What can be said of the admirable pillow- 
fighting in which sturdy champions sat astride 
a bar and banged away at each other with 
sacks plumped out with hay? We laughed 
more than a little to see. But when the 
blindfold boxing came on we laughed till we 
could laugh no more. And some of us paid 
the penalty, for the blindfolded heroes, robbed 
by circimistance of their proper prey, usually 
f o\md their way to the ring and pummelled the 
spectators who pressed against it to a chorus of 
hearty approval from everyone who was out of 
reach. Justice cannot be done to all these joy- 
ous features of the afternoon. Suffice it to 
say that we had a happy time and went home 
babbling of wonders, if rather tired. 

And we can rest afterwards. As Guy says, 
"Now Peace is over we shall have time to go 
fishing." 



173 



XIV 

THE SCAVENGERS 

WE have been meditating on the vanity of 
htiman effort. Some time ago there 
was a concerted movement on the part of the 
Powers that Ought to Be towards Hving a less 
muddled life. For example, there was a vast 
accumulation of numbers of a highly re- 
spectable but somewhat bulky weekly journal, 
which, so to say, blocked every avenue of pro- 
gress. It was decided, therefore, to cut out 
such features as might be wanted for future 
reference and to "scrap" the rest. A similar 
procedure was decided on for other odd papers, 
pamphlets, circulars, and similar reading 
matter. 

And forthwith the work began. Then Guy 
and Penelope arrived with loud cries of 
enthusiasm, and hurled themselves into the 
fray. * * Oh, the pictures ! ' ' they shouted. And 

174 



THE vSCAVENGERS 

it was: — Might they have this? Did anyone 
want that? Was the other really marked 
for abolition? And we became aware that 
Teddy, Cassandra and other friends had 
pronounced artistic tastes for which there was 
now unexpected chance of satisfaction. So 
there was a busy scene, the Powers that Ought 
to Be filling waste paper baskets, Guy and 
Penelope analysing them and making selec- 
tions at their pleasure, either with busy fingers 
or blunt scissors. It was all very pleasant 
because the analysts proved usually willing 
to help. Their selections made, they cheer- 
fully carried the full waste paper baskets away 
into outer darkness and came back for more. 
The clearance rapidly seemed satisfactory and 
complete. 

It was some days later that the flaw in the 
arrangement became manifest, and the nature 
of the discovery was this: The door of the 
toy-cupboard in the nursery, always a hard- 
worked and ill-treated portal, suddenly burst 
open as from an intolerable strain and out 

175 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

on to the nursery floor poured an avalanche of 
abiblia, which, as readers of Charles Lamb 
know, are forms of literature that a gentleman 
can be without. In this case the conglomera- 
tion consisted of everything that had been 
thrown away so toilsomely at the recent 
clearance. Guy explained with perfect sang 
froid that naturally they had not been able to 
cut out or tear out all the things they wanted 
in the limited time at their disposal. He 
anticipated that this would take "ever so 
long." It may be recorded that Mr. Nobody 
came to the assistance of a harassed household 
in this emergency, and the toy-cupboard was 
pretty well cleared out while men slept. He 
was a good deal blamed, but it is difficult to get 
"upsides" with Mr. Nobody. 

Since that abortive tidying it has been 
really very difi&cult to get rid of rubbish. 
Every waste paper basket is liable to the 
strictest scrutiny and its contents are rigor- 
ously overhauled, anything of possible value 
being removed to the dtmip of the moment. 

176 



THE SCAVENGERS 

An unlovely heap of envelopes, cardboard, tin 
and rag at the corner of one of the rosebeds is 
such a dtrnip. "Oh, that!''' says Guy, "we've 
been playing shop." His tone implies gross 
stupidity in the questioner. Any fool would 
surely have known that commerce is an affair 
of heaps, which accumulate in picturesque 
confusion till the transport strike may be over, 
"/'m the shop-lady," adds Penelope, "an' it's 
no good your asking 'cos we haven't got none. 
An' we shan't have I don't know when," she 
concludes triumphantly. Penelope's experi- 
ence of shops has of course been gained since 
they were turned into sub-departments of 
State with full powers. She becomes a trifle 
over-bearing as a shop-lady. 

Guy, a little more advanced in knowledge, 
makes a good after-the-war shop-man. 
"Everything has went up horrible," he de- 
clares. "This will be sixpence now." Only a 
constitutional feebleness in the mathematics 
prevents his exacting ten times the old price. 
The right spirit of endeavour is there. So too 

13 177 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

is the needed clearness of vision. "To- 
morrow it will have went up more, and it will 
be two sixpences." One has to look ahead in 
affairs. 

It seems possible that if things go on as they 
have begun it will in the future be quite a feas- 
ible thing to combine the dignity and emolu- 
ments of keeping a shop with the moderately 
fresh air and the freedom of the fine old pro- 
fession of scavenging which you carry on in 
dust heaps, street kennels, and other well- 
furnished places. To spend Monday collect- 
ing your stock with a stick which has a sharp 
nail at its end, and to repose yourself in a chair 
behind a coimter all Tuesday while you sell 
each item of rag or paper or whatever it may 
be for "two sixpences" — that would surely be 
a brave way of living. Guy and Penelope if 
they remain in their present frame of mind will 
almost certainly take to it, provided that they 
find openings, or that there is anything left to 
pick up by then — that seems the chief danger. 
This problem of production may of course 

178 



THE SCAVENGERS 

have a marked effect on dust heaps. The hats 
and boots that once rewarded collectors are 
already becoming hard to find; presumably 
they stay on heads and feet. We can vouch 
for several of them personally. 

There is, for example, Poggin's garden hat. 
At the moment, it is true, it lies among the 
leaf -mould, if our eyes do not deceive us, but 
it will not stay there. In due course it will 
be retrieved and replaced on Poggin's head. 
Fortimately he is not aware that it formerly 
protected Guy from the sim, nor does he know 
what a hard time it had later in trying to 
perform a like service for Penelope, to whom a 
hat is as a rule an encimibrance, and he cannot 
be aware that such hats in the happy old days 
would have been often foimd on dust heaps. 
So he wears the thing without special protest. 
And he will no doubt go on wearing it so long 
as his head will go into it or until its brim falls 
off, after which it will probably only serve as 
two drawing-room ornaments or an offering for 
a bazaar. By that time another hat will 

179 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

descend to him by the law of entail. Penelope 
also is provided for. Guy may find himself in 
difficulties unless his head grows a good deal. 
The felt hats on the hall pegs are too big for 
him at present. But they are good lasting 
hats. One, which was retrieved from the 
lumber attic, must already have weathered a 
dozen years or more, and it is quite capable of 
another decade without disintegration. 

The King's highway furnishes certain op- 
portunities for scavenging, and here Penelope 
is more active than Guy, who sometimes 
adopts a virtuous manner. "You oughtn't to 
pick that up," he will say. "You don't know 
who's had it." Which is, of course, a very 
just observation. But it does not influence 
Penelope much, except to make her less open 
in her doings. When she wishes to gather 
old matches, buttons, hairpins, paper bags, 
or what not, she now adopts a subterfuge, 
dropping behind with her miniature peram- 
bulator and using it as a dustcart. But if the 
Director of the large perambulator, in which 

1 80 



THE SCAVENGERS 

Poggin rides, looks round over a shoulder with 
intent to upbraid, then is seen the absurd 
spectacle of Penelope also looking round over 
her shoulder at an imaginary defaulter still 
further behind, while a shrill voice scolds thus : 
*'Will you come on? Ccme on this minute. 
If you don't come on we shall go on and leave 
you." It is difficult to know how to act in 
such circimistances. 

Latterly the scavenging business has been 
intensified by the acquisition of the art of 
sewing. Guy has accomplished twenty full 
stitches, and Penelope about sixteen, and they 
have only been at it for a few days. But 
there has been a great assembling of material, 
odds and ends of ribbons, fabrics, rags, and so 
on, for the first needle was threaded just 
before a new tidying-up-of what is called the 
"piece cupboard" — ^was started. Naturally 
the sewers made a point of being present, and 
they stiffered nothing to escape them which 
cotild possibly be associated with needle and 
cotton. And a new form of dump has come 

i8i 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

into being. Sometimes you will find it in an 
armchair under a cushion, sometimes on one of 
the stairs, sometimes in a soup-tureen on the 
kitchen dresser. There is no set rule for 
dumps. 

Poggin has his scavenging instincts also, 
but he does not carry things quite so far as do 
the others. He picks things up- — he will pick 
anything up from a squashed snail to a cast 
horseshoe, but fortunately he sets no perma- 
nent store by them. So if he has scavenged 
too shamelessly, all that is necessary is to 
divert his attention to something else, a half- 
brick, for instance, or any other relatively 
harmless matter which needs two hands in 
lifting and carrying. In the last resort an 
apple makes a sure diversion, and now that 
they are getting pretty ripe they can be used 
with more confidence. 

It is a grave question, and worth considering 
by a conference of Powers, how far it is neces- 
sary to keep a nursery supplied with toys of 
simiptuous construction and elaborate designs, 

182 



THE SCAVENGERS 

at any rate while the occupants of the nursery 
are still quite small. Guy and Penelope now 
have some appreciation of species in toys, but 
for a long time they only classified them gener- 
ally into Orders, as does the higher Natural 
History. These were three: Soft toys, hard 
toys, and broken toys, the third naturally 
including the genera, breakable, tear able and 
bendable. The hard toys were few in number, 
and Mr. Equal, celebrated heretofore, was 
chief among them. Nothing — it has been 
proved — could break Mr. Equal. Besides 
toys, however, the world contained many 
admirable things which were of perpetual 
interest, the things which you scavenge for 
yourself, and these were just as good for 
whiling away shining hours as effigies of men, 
animals, or machines. As it was with Guy 
and Penelope, so it is now with Poggin. He 
carries Fluffy Dog No. 2 about with him a 
good deal, it is true, but that is merely the 
natural craving for an armful. For solid 
amusement give him a paper bag, a piece of 

183 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

coal, and a bit of stick, or possibly a pile of 
those novels that have risen by twopenny 
stages from seven pence to two shillings. They 
afford pleasant entertainment as personal lug- 
gage, especially the slippery ones, which are 
perpetually sliding out of one's arms on to 
the floor. 

It seems as though the love of toys, as such, 
were an artificial growth, stimulated by the 
simple pleasure which the Powers that Are 
take in them. Primarily childhood is not 
interested in toys but in things, as an old shoe, 
a cardboard box, a cigarette case, and so on. 
These give imagination scope and stimulate 
ingenuity. Also, it may be, they are a 
reminder that life is real and earnest, which 
is no doubt useful when one feels like that. 
The Powers that Are, on the other hand, are for 
the most part blase about things but fasci- 
nated by toys, which to them are a reminder 
that life need not be wholly real and earnest. 
That is largely why toy-merchants flotuish 
and why uncles bring such large parcels. 

184 



THE SCAVENGERS 

Childhood's corrective for this anomalous 
state of affairs is possibly a sound one, to re- 
duce the unduly elaborate and expensive toys 
as soon as possible to the status of things. 
Take, for instance, " Nore's Ark," as we call it. 
Nore and his company are scattered to the four 
winds^ — a trunkless elephant or a legless zebra 
might be encountered almost an3rwhere in the 
garden — ^but the ark, lacking its roof and 
stern, makes a tolerable receptacle for acorns 
or chestnuts and is in high esteem. Similarly 
the miniature tennis racket, never having 
smitten its shuttlecock save experimentally 
before presentation, having lost its head and 
become unrecognisable, is now one of Poggin's 
favourite weapons for banging the floor or 
hitting table legs or what not. But even that 
appeals to him less than the bit of iron piping 
which he found in the garden and carries 
about with him whenever opportunity offers. 

In connection with this short way with too 
elaborate toys it is interesting to record that 
there are scavengers outside the home circle. 

185 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

A collection was recently made consisting of a 
doll's leg, a horse's mane, the handle of a 
wooden spade and so on. Guy and Penelope 
were very busy about it, and a good deal 
exercised as to what could and could not be 
spared for it. In the end it was not very 
considerable because not a little property had 
to be " referred back " for further consideration. 
Eventually, however, a small heap of debris 
was finally approved and placed in the spare- 
room grate "to wait till called for." It 
appeared that the person who was going to call 
for it was "Mr. Nobody's little boy," worthy 
son of a busy sire. He called. Anyhow the 
heap vanished. 

A recent incident shows how toys are sub- 
ordinated to more serious things. "What are 
you going to do this wet afternoon? " asked the 
Controller. "Oh," said Guy, "we're going to 
have a Peace in the nursery. We're going to 
put all the soft toys to stand in a row for a race. 
And Penny and I are going to stand at the side 
and laugh." Now, none of the kind donors 

i86. 



THE SCAVENGERS 

of the said soft toys, Japanese Monkey, Her- 
bert, Fluffy Dog No. 2, Big Teddy, Old Teddy, 
and so on, would ever have thought of such a 
fate for their gifts. "Butchered to make a 
Roman holiday!" 



187 



XV 

PRIVATE FISHERY 

OF all the unlikely places — and yet perhaps 
not so unlikely after all. For in this 
land of waters you might meet with sport 
almost anywhere, even out in the fields if you 
chose to angle at large when the floods come, 
as they are pretty sure to do some when 
between January and March. In front of us 
is a river, to right and left of us is a canal. 
At the back of us is another river. Eastwards 
is a big lake, westwards a series of fish ponds. 
Everywhere are streams and ditches more or 
less filled with water and inhabited by fish. 

But Guy's fishery is the least of them all. 
Where the road rises to cross the railway there 
are two culverts, one on each side of the 
wooden steps at the end of the walk by which 
we get out of the garden. That on the left is 
quite considerable, carrying back to the river 

i88 



PRIVATE FISHERY 

a tolerable stream maybe six feet wide and a 
foot deep. Doubtless there are good fishes 
in that stream, for the dace will work up early 
in the year and some probably stay there all 
the summer. If Guy had made this his 
preserve there would be no cause for surprise. 
But it is the other culvert which attracts him, 
a mere trifle of a pipe eighteen inches wide, 
with the water (in these days of drought) 
coming to a dead end a few feet below it. 
Just at the culvert's mouth is a yard of fishable 
water six inches deep. "Fishing? There?'' 
was the natural comment when the project was 
first mooted. 

"Yes, there, certainly," was the reply, and 
so tempting was the description of the sport, 
so vivid the accoimt of fishes seen, so real the 
three-inch dace, the minnow, and the two 
sticklebacks in the jam jar, that it was then 
and there decided to make a party of pleasure 
and to invite the catcher of chubs thereto, on 
condition that he provide tackle and do all 
that was necessary about worms. 

189 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

This angling is a curious madness. Why it 
comes over some and spares others it is hard 
to say, but it is probable that those who are 
spared have never sat with goggling eyes and 
bated breath watching a live fish in the clear 
water approach the suspended worm and poise 
itself in doubt before it. The yearning then 
is simply fearful, and if the fish, having 
doubted enough, turns away, the impulse to 
be down and at it with a net is almost 
irresistible. 

The party of pleasure sits on the brick wall 
of the culvert and looks down with greedy eyes. 
In full view there are three minnows and five 
sticklebacks, whiles a stickleback tweaks the 
end of the First Angler's worm, but it will 
not come to serious grips with it. Serious 
grips with a stickleback means a slow laborious 
swallowing of half a worm. Then all the 
angler has to do is to lift the line steadily from 
the water and the stickleback comes with it. 
For he is in the ridiculous position of having 
filled himself so full that he cannot part with 

190 



PRIVATE FISHERY 

his prey and he therefore has to hang on 
despite himself. To-day, however, no stickle- 
back shows genuine interest. 

"Guy, you're frightening them," says the 
First Angler. Indeed Guy's lure is leaping up 
and down in the water in an agitated manner. 
Doubtless good Father Walton knew how 
difficult it is to keep the point of one's pea- 
stick quiet and steady when one is awfully 
anxious to catch a fish. Probably his Scholar 
did much the same sort of thing when he 
watched the chub with a white spot on its tail. 
If your fish won't come to the worm, make the 
worm pursue the fish — that is a very natural 
and pardonable theory, even if it does not 
succeed. 

"There were much bigger ones," says the 
First Angler, "like that one we caught. And 
spotted ones too." And Guy is persuaded to 
lay his pea-stick down so that the little red 
worm may lie temptingly on the bottom. 
Then, perhaps, from under the arch . . . 

" Look, did you see that? " Yes, indeed, we 
191 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

all saw. It was like a giant among the min- 
nows, but it went back under the arch at once. 
" That was a spotted one. Oh, and there's one 
of the others, two, three — Guy, leave your rod 
alone. Of course they won't take it if you 
jump it about. You've frightened them away 
again." 

Even as this complaint is made, there is a 
scurry under the arch, out dashes a fish, seizes 
the First Angler's worm, and in a moment is 
flying up into the middle air, its scales flashing 
in the sunlight as it goes. "Let me see. 
May I put it in the bottle. What is it? 
Isn't it a nice fish? Is it as big as the one we 
got yesterday? Can I catch one too? Shall 
we put it in the tank?" Never did a three- 
inch dace cause a greater volume of talk. 
Guy has to discuss the affair from every 
aspect, and to pick the creature out of its 
jam jar three times before he feels that the 
incident is closed. Then we all go back to our 
fishing. 

There is an interval of peace and quiet. 
192 



PRIVATE FISHERY 

And then, "Oh, I've got one." Guy posi- 
tively squeals with excitement. But, alas, 
he has been too precipitate. The stickleback 
has no more than got the end of the worm into 
its mouth and it falls back with a tiny splash. 
"Oh, I want the net. Please let me catch it 
with the net. I do want to catch it." 

The shrimp net is there for emergencies, but 
not for mere revenge like this. "No, you'd 
only disturb the water. You wait a bit, and 
you'll catch something better than the stickle- 
back in a minute." 

"Shall I catch one like yours?" He is 
assured that he will if he displays the proper 
angler's patience. And so we dispose our- 
selves to wait again with our eyes earnestly on 
the mouth of the culvert 

It is a glorious day. The sun pours down 
upon us and the bricks on which we sit are 
warm to the hand. The air is full of the 
humming of insects and the chirp of grass- 
hoppers in the long grass of the bank. A 
robin has hopped on to the stile to see what we 

X3 193 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

are doing and to find out if there is anything 
to his advantage in it. Just beyond the hedge 
there is a steady munching, most comfortable 
of sounds. The great cart horses in the field 
have drawn up to the shade to continue their 
dinner. They are company for the lonely 
party of fishers, or they would be if needed. 

But they are not needed, for see, where a 
whole troop of fishes comes out from the arch, 
several like the one in the bottle and three 
spotted ones. Now for it! These be tense 
moments as all the fishes swim about the two 
worms, now seeming to notice them, now 
apparently ignoring them. The minnows and 
sticklebacks have given way before their 
betters and are gone into the weeds below. 
The great ones have the pool all to themselves. 
But they do not bite, unhappily, and presently 
they are again vanished, and nothing done. 

This is a bad business. We are annoyed. 
Who ever before saw so many fish and two 
worms and no bites? It is not to be borne. 
Let us — but no, the culvert goes right under 

194 



PRIVATE FISHERY 

the road, and the handle of the shrimp net is 
only foiir feet long. It would be useless to 
scoop, for the fishes would simply swim out of 
reach. Let us rather try another dodge. 
Now, see that fly on the brick. Advance a 
hand very cautiously behind him, now a quick 
dashing encirclement — so. Pinch him for 
pity's sake, and let us put him on the hook 
instead of the worm. Now let him down till 
he rests on the surface of the water, and wait. 
Here come all the fishes again, and at once 
there is a bold swirl, the fly has vanished, and 
behold another silvery inmate for the jam jar. 
It is great medicine, as we anglers say, this 
dibbling with a fly. 

But it cannot always be administered. 
For the life of us we cannot catch another fly, 
and we have to rebait with a worm, a little 
wriggly pink one this time. It serves though. 
Hardly is it on the bottom when out comes the 
biggest of all the company of fishes and is gone 
with it under the arch. But not for long. 
The First Angler grasps the pea-stick with 

195 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

both hands, tightens lips, and pulls. And so 
there is another fish for the bottle, the greatest 
yet. "Is that a gudgeon? What's a gudgeon? 
Is it bigger than a dace? It's all blue and 
silver. Can I have it in my hand?" Guy 
celebrates this great capture in his accustomed 
manner. Truly it is worth celebrating, for 
the gudgeon measures four inches, no less. 

After this there is another spell of idleness. 
The fishes come out as before from time to 
time, but they seem uneasy in their minds. 
Perhaps they miss their late companions. 
Anyhow they take no notice of either of the 
worms. Fishing begins to seem a slow busi- 
ness. It feels as though it must be getting 
on for tea-time. 

"It canH be tea-time," protests Guy, "till 
I've caught a fish. You said I would catch 
one." 

Here is an awkward situation. It is quite 
true. There was a prophecy. Of all the rash 
speeches — for if fishing teaches you nothing 
else it teaches you the unwisdom of being con- 

196 



PRIVATE FISHERY 

fident. Why men spend whole weeks at it 
sometimes and catch nothing at all. There 
are men who have spent years trying to catch 
a Thames trout and are still waiting for one to 
bite. And Guy was promised that he should 
catch a fish "in a minute." This is a bad 
business and faces grow long. 

Then we are suddenly aroused to interest by 
strange events in the water. Away under the 
arch out of sight there is a commotion which 
results in waves coming out into the pool. 
And with them come all the fishes in a great 
hurry. Guy tries to make his worm hurry 
too, but is persuaded to put the pea-stick down 
again. The fishes go round the pool and 
vanish once more. "There's something up 
in there," is the sage if not very illuminating 
comment. 

All becomes quiet again, and minds are 
bent on the problem, how to satisfy Guy 
without a fish. It is clear that none of the 
company below is willing to oblige. They 
are all obviously completely out of humour. 

197 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

And then, without any warning, there is a 
fresh excitement. Something incredibly large 
dashes out from the arch, grabs Guy's worm, 
and bolts back with it, pulling the point of the 
pea-stick down as it goes. There is great 
confusion. We all jump about, and cry 
aloud, clutch at the pea-stick, give advice, 
exclaim, pull, heave, and finally exult. For 
look what we have flouncing before us on the 
grass. It is a noble perch, with red fins, 
black stripes, and well armed back. It is 
seven inches long. It is much bigger than the 
gudgeon. It could eat the gudgeon, very 
nearly. It is almost worth cooking. And 
Guy has caught it. Didn't we tell him he 
would catch one in a minute? True, we never 
hoped for quite such a fish as this. It will 
hardly go into the bottle, except standing on 
its head. Never mind, there is plenty of room 
in the tank. 

Now, we can go back to tea with complete 
satisfaction. We have done all that we set 
out to do. Aye and more also. For from this 

198 



PRIVATE FISHERY 

day forward Guy is sealed of the brotherhood 
of anglers. The madness that came upon him 
in his sixth year will be with him when he 
numbers three score and ten. This may be 
for good or for ill, but the thing is done now. 

"I fish very well," observes the angler 
complacently as he trots along homewards 
hugging the jam jar. 

Fortunately this dangerous form of pride 
will not last. Some day he will find himself 
confronted with that curious manifestation 
"the evening rise," or he will try to cast his fly 
against a downstream wind, or fish for a carp, 
or lose a salmon — anyhow he will find out 
some permanent truths as he goes on, among 
them the superiority of luck to skill. But it is 
a sweet madness, amahilis insania as the poet 
has said. 



199 



XVI 

PARTS OF SPEECH 

WILL you feed the chuckins? ' ' 
"All right. Where's the key? " 
"In the backer, and the backer's in the 
kinney. Take the neggs to Marfer and put 
the key in the dummuna when you is done." 
"Right you are. Afterwards I've got to 
put a nail in for the momper, oil the mowsheen, 
and look to the waste pipe of the bash." 

Into this "devastating dialogue" as Punch 
might justly call it, intrudes a voice of grave 
protest. "You are talking funny. What's 
bash?" And Guy surveys the unfortunate 
speakers with something of the expression 
which must distinguish a Master of Limacy 
when he is about his business. 

The word " imf ortunate " is used advisedly, 
for it is not pleasant to be left behind in the 

200 



PARTS OF SPEECH 

march of Progress. Time was when Guy 
would have imderstood all those queer words. 
Time was when he used them himself, being, 
indeed, their inventor. And now he disclaims 
them. Nay worse, he does not recognise 
them as words at all. Even Penelope scorns 
such a way of talking, while Poggin's few 
utterances give promise of quite a different 
convention when he becomes rather more 
articulate. ' ' Nonkney out nare ' ' (donkey out 
there) is his most important observation so far, 
and the phrasing seems to be his own. 

And so the old mursery talk survives only on 
the lips of tradition, as it were, and the niursery 
folk marvel when they hear it, much as the rest 
of us would marvel if we were to listen to the 
imcouth speech of the ancient Picts. 

The mursery is pretty precise nowadays. 
"So this," observed Penelope meditatively, 
" is er office. ' ' She was a member of the party 
which had gone off to see the new house, and 
there were business calls to be made first. 
"Can't office men ever see froo their 

201 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

windows?" she enquired. An old-fashioned 
wire blind happened to shut out the disturbing 
influences of the busy High Street. "They 
stand on a chair if they want to," said Guy 
with ready perception. "I spose they're 
let," she commented with a touch of wistful- 
ness, which was not really justified. It is 
dancing on chairs which invites censure, 
whether in offices or elsewhere. And no one 
knows that better than Penelope. 

The bulk of our traditional speech is in- 
herited from Guy, who as a pioneer used his 
tongue very freely and boldly. Considerable 
clearings had been made in the backwoods of 
conversation by the time Penelope took up her 
claim, so the ancient language owes little or 
nothing to her. In the words of the song, she 
is notable not so much for what she says as for 
' ' the nasty way she says it. " For instance, as 
"the muffin lady" she tries to palm off her 
wares on a patient world at a shilling apiece. 
The patient world being afflicted with the new 
poverty remonstrates at so great expenses. 

202 



PARTS OF SPEECH 

"Well," says the muffin-lady, "you can have' 
these for sixpence. They're imitation muffins, 
muffin outside and brick inside." And you 
can see that she wishes such niggardly custom- 
ers a hearty indigestion with each mouthful. 

Some of the ancient words still survive, as 
"huncle" and "happle," which are used 
regularly. Where the aspirates came from it 
would be hard to say, for superfluous aspirates 
are not a family failing, but they are retained 
firmly. Indeed, there is perhaps an excuse for 
them. They seem to add something — to an 
uncle dignity, to an apple roimdness. Htmcle 
Tertius is a much more important person than 
Uncle Tertius, while a person who bursts into 
the store-room demanding "a happle," with 
every atom of breath in her small body 
emphasising the desire, is not likely to meet 
with a stern refusal. 

The tribe of uncles came to be emphasised 
by an odd train of events. When Guy was 
very small indeed it was decided that he must 
on no account fall into the common error 

203 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

of youth which is to hail every male person met 
out of doors with a jovial shout of "Daddy." 
He was carefully taught therefore that all such 
unattached persons were to receive no more 
cordial a greeting than "uncle." And he 
learnt his lesson very well. Many a coal man, 
many a commissionaire, many a felt-hatted 
nondescript, has paid a tribute to Guy's infant 
originality in the shape of a start of surprise. 
(None of them, perhaps, was more surprised, 
or more pained, than the immaculate young 
person from Eton, Harrow or Westminster, 
whose glossy hat excited Guy's approval. 
" Baby gentleman " — or syllables to that effect 
— was his loudly expressed admiration) . 

This continued for a considerable time, and 
uncles though unbelievably numerous, re- 
mained just uncles, till the morning of the 
spring cleaning, when the night-nursery was 
temporarily closed. Guy was put to enjoy 
his noon slimiber in another room. He had 
not been there long before there was a great 
wailing and lamentation which echoed through 

204 



PARTS OF SPEECH 

the house, and compelled instant attention. 
The trouble, it appeared, was "all those 
H-h-h-h-uncles," they murdered sleep. And 
Guy pointed accusingly at the photogravure 
reproductions of Rembrandt painted by him- 
self, Napoleon painted by David, and so on — 
the room contained several portraits of a 
pervading brownness. The terrors of the 
moment were soothed away, but uncles have 
had an aspirate ever since. 

Aunts are not so distinguished. There is 
nothing terrifying about aunts. You just 
gather them in. "You silly," said Penelope 
to Poggin, who was understood to have 
attempted to put a name to a lady, "that 
wasn't Aimtie May, that was Auntie Miss 
Shenkins." Penelope finds it good business 
to have plenty of aunts, who are useful 
relations. And of course she cultivates uncles 
too. "We've got heaps of himcles," she said 
thoughtfully one day, "but only three fathers, 
God and Father Christmas and Daddy." 

Nursery glossaries would be an interesting 
205 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG-^ 

study, and the student could pursue his 
researches comfortably at the dining-room 
table long after the nursery itself has ceased to 
yield any material worth collecting. For any 
given parents who are at all susceptible are 
sure to adopt all the worthier expressions 
which they overhear. When Poggin, for in- 
stance, pointed to Venus low-lying in the West 
on his first introduction to the inverted bowl of 
Night, and observed "Pot in ky," it was felt 
that he had enriched the family vocabulary, 
"Wonderful show of spots in the sky 
to-night," is the sort of thing that has resulted 
from his astronomical discovery. After all, 
who can take exception to bright spots wher- 
ever foimd? 

Some of the new words which are coined in 
the nursery have a decided picturesqueness 
of their own. Take "hattie bonno" as an 
example. This is merely a head-covering, 
hat, cap, bonnet, what you will. But some- 
how it calls up images of radiant summer 
evenings with the hay a-carrying, simburnt 

206 



PARTS OF SPEECH 

arms and necks, pink print dresses, bright 
cans of steaming tea, and pretty Dolly Var- 
den's face framed in the most charming of 
sun-bonnets, an article which has the essential 
spirit of all hats that were ever devised for the 
undoing of male observers. 

Other new words simimon pictures of a 
different kind. When Penelope discoursed of 
"elephants' husks," we wondered what 
bizarre notion was in her mind. The shell 
from which an elephant has been extracted — 
it is a big conception. It carries one to the 
South Kensington Museimi and the recon- 
structed mammoth. And thence it is no long 
jotirney for the swift mind through the forests 
of the dawn to the shores of that uncharted 
ocean wherein life wallowed in its hugest and 
most hideous form. The Things that were 
before history began — ^they have an awful 
fascination. But Penelope was not thinking 
of these, it appeared. When she spoke of 
elephants' husks she meant "their great long 
teef . ' ' Just ivory, in fact . Indeed, one might 

207 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

almost say just spillikens, so used is one to the 
idea of elephants' tusks. 

The "dear little baby chaff" was a thing 
that puzzled us rather for a time. Inter- 
change of amenities or "back chat" between 
the cots was of course no imknown thing, but 
a pleased recognition of its infantine charm, 
a consciousness of the pleasure with which 
other people would be likely to listen to it, 
seemed decidedly strange. It turned out, 
however, that a reference to a little red caH 
seen in the yard of Furlongs Farm was what 
was intended. 

A farm and its activities are a perpetual 
stimulus to the tongue of youth and it is to be 
noted that technical progress does not neces- 
sarily make things easier for that tongue. 
The Other Little Girl in old days in Norfolk 
used to watch "oxens" pulling the ploughs 
along. Guy's earlier visions were of "great 
big gee-gees" which performed the same task. 
But now Poggin is coming to regard a "mo- 
plow" as the customary thing for making 

208 



PARTS OF SPEECH 

furrows. All sorts of new ' ' sheens, ' ' as most of 
us call them generically, are beginning to play 
a part in agriculture, and some of them will 
take a lot of pronouncing, if not for us, at any 
rate for other nursery folk in due season. 

To the people who are not really nursery 
folk, save by adoption, the trouble is not so 
much the coming of new things as the passing 
of old ones. When you have got used to that 
excellent fruit the "ododge," you will find 
its taste less admirable if you have to call it 
"orange." That useful utensil the wheel- 
barrow will lose much of its title to esteem 
when you are no longer able to refer to it as a 
"weelwow." Accustomed to declare briskly, 
in regard to your hot bath, that the "momper 
says hunno-five," how shall you bring yourself 
to a stilted and laborious statement that 
the "thermometer makes it one hundred 
and five?" Why the temperature will have 
dropped to nearly a hundred before you are 
through with all those syllables. 

The fact is that baby talk has not only 
^4 209 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

piquancy but also to a great extent practical 
utility as well. It takes short cuts to the 
expression of ideas and short cuts often save a 
lot of heavy going. We others who have had 
enough of the heavy going in our time gladly 
welcome the proffered relief. And then, just 
as it seems that merry hearts will go all the 
day, making nothing of stiles or ditches, the 
babies suddenly part company. Short cuts, 
they decide, are unscientific. They will try 
the heavy going instead. And so they take the 
uphill road, becoming daily more polysyllabic 
and more frankly ashamed of the incorrect 
speech that they sometimes hear uttered in 
their presence. It is one of life's tragedies 
that this should be so. 

And some day those babies will realise it 
too, when they in their turn find themselves 
left lonely in the byways uttering quaint 
sounds that have no meaning. 



210 



XVII 

IN PRAISE OF PENNIES 

UY hit me wiv a wooden." Thus 
Penelope in stem accusation. 

Guy contests the accuracy of this. "I was 
only shaking her and her head slipped against 
the door." 

"Well, that's a wooden," she persists 
stubbornly. 

"Besides she pinched me, because I said she 
hadn't tied her shoe proper all by herself. I 
did most of it." 

"You only put it froo, you beastly boy." 

What the Roman poet called "the accursed 
hunger after gold" is at the root of this 
distressing family affair. Not very long ago 
Guy earned a whole shilling by tying his shoe 
lace alone and unaided. Ever since Penelope 
has been seeking to establish her claim to a 

211 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

shilling too. But she has not yet succeeded 
and it tries her temper. 

The Powers that Be are quite firm about the 
conditions. There must be a real bow, not 
merely a plausible tangle, and no other fingers 
must have helped to fashion it. Even Pe- 
nelope's native ingenuity has so far failed to 
find any way of evading either clause, and. 
Guy's lack of reticence makes it still more 
difficult for her. Hence the passage brawl 
which leads, so to say, to police-court proceed- 
ings. The case is dismissed with suitable 
cautions. On the one hand the accused is 
warned that hitting people with a wooden is 
liable to be attended with a fine of one shilling. 
On the other hand the accuser is advised in 
future to employ fingers in the legitimate 
business of practising bows rather than in 
pinching brothers. 

"An' now can I have the shillin', please?" 
she says, when all that is settled. Penelope 
is nothing if not pertinacious. It is to be 
feared that she is not unfamiliar with the f orm- 

212 



IN PRAISE OF PENNIES 

ula, "Oh yes, take it and rirn along," which 
signifies the capitulation of the absent mind to 
the forces of reiteration. But in this case 
there is a principle at stake, to say nothing of 
the shilling, and she is informed that she 
shall have it so soon as she has complied with 
the conditions hereinbefore laid down. After 
which she retires in good order, murmiuing. 

Financial interests are a fairly new thing 
with us, and they date from the opening of the 
new shop. Before that event money matters 
were a vague abstraction. Someone had 
complained about narrow circimistances. 
"Oh," said Guy, "you should go to Mimimy. 
She can make money. She writes on bits of 
paper and they turn into it." Current speech 
made light of money. If a thing was not six- 
pence, it was probably a thousand poimds. 
There were no subtle gradations of value. 

With the opening of the shop, however, 
many things became clearer. For the new 
shop lies on the favourite road past the mill 
and the smithy, and as you go towards the 

213 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

church. It is very handy because it sells 
groceries and even tobacco. So on most days 
either the morning or the afternoon walk 
includes the excitement of pulling up the old- 
fashioned latch, jangling the old-fashioned 
bell, and having a chat with Mrs. Jones while 
she does up the necessary parcel. 

It is a very nice shop in all ways, but its 
most delightful feature, of cotirse, is its direct 
appeal to persons of limited means. It keeps 
up the good old custom of penn'orths, and you 
can have them in wood, or tin, or a bag, or a 
bar, just as you please. Now that penn'orths 
have become so rare in most establishments 
Mrs. Jones is considered a public benefactor. 
And we generally have them in the bag, and 
they are all gone before we get home. 

There are various approved ways of gather- 
ing the means for cash dealings with Mrs. 
Jones. Tying a bow, as already indicated, is 
one. Acciirate interpretation of the face of 
the clock is another, but this will, like the bow, 
mean a bonus rather than a steady income. 

214 



IN PRAISE OP PENNIES 

And payment is likely to be deferred, because 
we are still uncertain as to the significance of 
Roman figures apart from their context, and 
the movement of clock hands is as yet a 
mystery. 

More certain, if less immediately remimer- 
ative, is the payment for useful works, the 
collection of acorns for the pig, for instance, 
and the finding of eggs which errant fowls 
have laid in the wrong places. The value set 
on this work is a satire on the inverted times in 
which we live. One day the Controller, cast- 
ing up a colimm of household disbursements, 
was bothered about an odd halfpenny. "I 
can't get that halfpenny, ' * said she. ' * / know, ' ' 
said Penelope, "if you go out and find er egg, 
you'll get a halfpenny. Only you mustn't 
find it where you know it is." 

To think of old days when you could buy 
eggs in open market for twenty a shilling! 
And now it is worth while paying a halfpenny 
each for eggs laid by our own poultry. Even 
the egg which sat plain to view on the 

215 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

very threshold of the stable was worth a 
halfpenny. "It was in a awful dangerous 
place," said Guy. "Why anyone coming 
along and not noticing and saying, 'Did you 
ever see such a beautiful sky?' might have 
trodden on it." Perhaps he was conscious 
of a possible weakness in his claim, for the 
stable is one of the places where, as Penelope 
says, "you know it is." But an egg half in 
and half out of forbidden territory is worth 
claiming as genuinely "trove." 

If only the birds would always choose such 
easy places! Unhappily some of them seem 
to take a fiendish delight in frustrating the 
efforts of wage-earners. Two or three fly up 
into the loft for their egg-laying and emerge 
clucking sardonically. Guy and Penelope 
may sometimes be seen standing wistfully at 
the foot of the tall ladder which is the only 
means of getting up to the loft unless one 
has wings. Neither can yet manage more 
than five rungs without losing nerve. So 
any eggs that are laid in the loft from day to 

216 



IN PRAISE OF PENNIES 

day are retrieved by William as part of his 
ordinary routine, and, in a manner of speaking, 
are of profit to nobody, except of course the 
Powers that Be, who naturally don't coimt. 

Of late the question of weekly pocket- 
money has been under discussion, and it has 
been debated between the holders of the piu^se 
whether in the modern depreciation of the 
currency a penny a week is enough for small 
people to manage on. Such debate naturally 
invites reminiscence of the good old times 
when pennies really had some piirchasing 
power. 

Why, on one occasion the Other Little Girl 
found it worth while to lead her smaller 
brother a good two miles across coimtry so 
that she might superintend the laying out of 
his penny. It was very necessary that he 
should spend it on chocolate cream, not 
squander it on plain chocolate, as would be 
his wild impulse if left unadvised. And at 
five the Other Little Girl much preferred 
chocolate cream. There were, perhaps, com- 

217 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

plications arising out of this adventiire, for 
though the Powers that Used to Be must have 
grown accustomed to aberrations on the part 
of the Other Little Girl, they never became 
quite reconciled to losing her brother. Now, 
however, memory only retains the impression 
of chocolate cream well earned and heartily 
enjoyed. 

In the brave old days a penny was a coin. 
It was divisible into definite and quite use- 
ful parts. The halfpenny would buy many 
choice things, and even the farthing had its 
place in barter. "A farth'n's worth of ast 
drops" from Mrs. Tuttle's was not to be 
sneezed at, nor were the two enormous pear- 
drops which that lady would also give in 
exchange for the same coin. 

Hundreds-and-Thousands — ^how many of 
them a farthing would purchase was never 
ascertained, but a good round number. Then 
there was a thrilling species of cocoanut-ice 
of which one could get an appreciable portion 
with a miniature spoon for the better eating of 

218 



IN PRAISE OF PENNIES 

it. Then there were farthing buns, and real 
toys, tiny guns of bronze, Httle swords, pick- 
axes, spades — cheu Posthume labuntur anni. 

To think that the farthing should now be 
merely a faQon de parler in lingerie establish- 
ments, a way of uttering the rude word 
"florin" without shocking feminine suscepti- 
bilities! "One-eleven-three" — that is all a 
farthing comes to now. In the shops which 
cater for men the farthing has ceased to exist 
even as a matter of polite intercourse. There 
if they want to say florin they call it two-and 
six — and be hanged to you!" 

As for the ancient halfpenny, you could 
tender it in payment, and receive change. 
What more need be said? 

The only cheering thing about the present 
state of affairs is that quite near the new 
house — ^let us whisper it! — we have in this 
very year of highest prices seen veritable half- 
penny btms, and, more than that, we have 
seen marbles, sixteen of them for a penny. 
Father Christmas, it is understood, before 

219 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

his last coming searched London over and 
could not find a marble anywhere. "Can we 
go to-morrow? " said Guy when he heard about 
these discoveries. "Can I have them now?^' 
added Penelope. "I bim," put in Poggin, 
who knows what he wants all right, even 
if he has some difficulty in expressing his 
knowledge in speech. 

The memory of all the joys that were 
summed up in the word "penny" has almost 
decided it that the scale of weekly allowance 
must now be twopence. And, if things im- 
prove a bit, possibly that twopence shall be 
free of income tax. 



020 



XVIII 
THE LAST WORD 

A VOICE: "You're not to come near my 
Teddy. You're a stranger and he's 
frightened of strangers." 

Another Voice: "No, I'm not a stranger." 

A Voice: "Yes, you are." 

Voices: "No, I'm not. Yes, you are. 
No, I'm not. Yes, you are. No, I'm not. 
Yes, you are. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. 
No, I'm not ..." 

A Voice: "Well, I wish you were." 

We dispute, you see, much as do other 
people in the great and argumentative world, 
about the only difference being that we are 
somewhat terser than our neighbours. Where 
they are apt to say, "On reviewing the whole 
circumstances of the case I do not feel that it 
is incumbent on me to adopt the course of 

221 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

action prescribed," we simply observe, 
"Won't," or maybe "Shan't," as otir mood is. 

Penelope said "Shan't" at dinner-time 
yesterday between meat and pudding, and 
kept up a longish debate by repeating the word 
at intervals. Meanwhile Guy and Poggin 
vigorously applied the spoon of merit to the 
plate of righteousness and the pudding grew 
rapidly less. 

Penelope's negatives were pimctuated by 
tears, for the pudding could hardly hold out 
against boys of such blameless behaviour if 
they went on like that, but still she obstinately 
refused to express sorrow for her mis- 
demeanour. 

Guy offered his plate for more. Poggin was 
but three spoonfuls behind him, and he kept 
one round eye fixed on the dish. At last it 
was more than she could endure. "I'm s-s-s- 
orry," she admitted in a choked voice, adding, 
"but I'm still awful angry wiv you." Some- 
how Penelope always manages to get in the 
last word. She has a way of making it 

222 



THE LAST WORD 

difficult, if not impossible, for the other side 
to find a profitable observation. On an 
earlier occasion, also at the dinner-table, she 
replied to the customary enquiry as to a 
second helping with the imenlightening sound 
"Ur." 

"And what does *ur' mean?" said the 
Dispenser crushingly. 

'"Ur, ' replied Penelope, "means 'please* 
and 'please' means you must do it." And 
really when one contemplates Penelope in the 
attitude of supplicant one comes to see that 
her interpretation of the word is probably 
correct. 

She does not quite always get the best of it, 
though. Guy in the capacity of elder brother 
now and then winds up a discussion finally. 
Some piece of erroneous activity was being 
debated and Penelope had stoutly asserted her 
irresponsibility in the matter. The thing 
had been done, true, but external pressure 
had, she was sure, been brought to bear. 
"No, Penny," said Guy judicially, "that 

223 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

wasn't Satan, that was your own naughti- 
ness." 

Guy can be very overwhelming at times, 
especially about Penelope. Only the other 
day he burst in with a tragic countenance. 
"I've got to tell you something," he exclaimed. 
"It's one of the worst things that ever hap- 
pened here." Minds were of course composed 
to hear the worst, even the death of the new 
pig. But what had happened was that Pene- 
lope had snatched up a cabbage just brought 
in to the kitchen from the garden, and had run 
away with it to the rabbit hutch. It was 
curious that the proceeding should have 
shocked Guy so deeply. When later in the 
day he made investigation into the working 
and parts of the garden tap, and incidentally 
flooded the precincts, he was mildly surprised 
at the fuss. "I only undid it," he protested, 
"and couldn't do it up again." And he 
seemed to think that the innocent pleasure 
displayed by Penelope and Poggin as they 
paddled about in their slippers was a vindi- 

224 



THE LAST WORD 

cation of his action. While the efforts of 
other people to emulate good Dame Parting- 
ton, who repelled the Atlantic with her broom, 
frankly amused him. 

One method of obtaining the last word 
which is approved in both the outer and inner 
world is the propounding of insoluble ques- 
tions . ' ' What , ' ' demands the indignant 1 etter- 
writer, "can be expected while we have a 
Government which . . .?" "Whither are we 
drifting ? ' ' clamours the leading article . ' ' Why 
are things as they are?" meditates the philo- 
sopher in his quietly speculative manner. No 
doubt one can find intelligible sounds of answer 
with which to escape any imputation of rude- 
ness or lack of interest, but in effect the 
questioners have said the last word. 

It is much the same in the inner world. 
Listen, for example, to this: 

"Don't walk about on that bed, Guy. 
Come off it. It will stop the seeds coming 
up." 

"What will?" 
« 225 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

"Why, your feet, trampling about like 
that." 

"Why will they?" 

"Because they make the ground hard and 
the seeds can't get through." 

"Why will they make the groimd hard?" 

"Because they squash it down where it has 
been raked." 

"Why was it raked?" 

"So that it shouldn't be hard for the seeds 
to come through." 

"Why shouldn't it be hard for them to come 
through?" 

It is likely that the answers begin to grow 
jejune at about this point. They may even 
die away at once into a "Because it does," 
which is equivalent to a casting-up of the 
eyes and a spreading of the hands that signify 
acquiescence in defeat. Supposing a mood 
which goes robustly on with more or less 
intelligent replies, Guy will pursue his enquiry 
to any length necessary for his purpose. 
First, perhaps, he will put a case of himself 

226 



THE LAST WORD 

stepping among the seeds on tiptoe. That 
dealt with, he will outline the possibility of his 
doing it not only on tiptoe but in his indoor 
shoes. After some enquiry into the relative 
properties of indoor and outdoor shoes, and 
the reasons therefor, he may introduce the 
problems presented by Penelope or Poggin 
imagined among the seeds. And so he invites 
quantitative analysis of the amoimt of damage 
done by feet of different sizes. From Poggin 
he may wander on to the limitless fields of 
natural history, and demand information as 
to the tramplings of mice or tomtits. And at 
any moment he may corner his opponent with a 
"Why do they?" 

He can be unexpected, too, if that is 
required. The Omniscience of God was being 
impressed upon him one day, and he pondered 
awhile. Presently he said, "Does he know 
what boot-buttons are made of?" It is, in 
fact, unwise to attempt to speak ex cathedra 
with Guy if such speaking bears in any way 
upon his personal procedure. In the realms 

227 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

of fancy, however, he is less exacting. The 
fairies, the giants, and such privileged folk, 
may do anything in reason and no awkward 
questions asked as to motives or justification. 

Sometimes the last word seems to be 
directed at things in general rather than any 
particular interlocutor. "I'm Mr. Smith and 
I'm walking along the High Street. You're 
Mrs. Smith and you're coming along behind 
carrying the parcels." This view of matri- 
mony seems strangely critical. Penelope, 
oddly enough, accepts the implied reproach. 
But she is very fond of parcels, which may 
influence her. For on occasion she proves 
that she is not unmindful of changing values. 
"I'm a police-lady," she will say, "and you've 
got to." That also is in the nature of a last 
word, for the time being. Later no doubt it 
will be, " I'm a Parliament-lady, and you don't 
say anything, ever." Then we shall know 
exactly how the world wags. 

Another interesting hit at the times was 
delivered by Guy when the diversion of the 

228 



THE LAST WORD 

day was household management. "You're 
the new maid," he said to his sister. "Are 
you permanent? No, I don't spose you know 
what permanent is. You're tempery." And 
Penelope was well pleased to be temporary. 
It suits her in all ways. As has before been 
suggested, she belongs to her age. 

Out of the mouths of babes — ^we have it on 
good authority whence wisdom comes. And 
daily the Powers that Be have occasion to 
marvel at the sure instinct of youth which 
detects the joint in the harness and looses 
against it the winged arrow of comment, none 
the less swift and sharp because it is winged 
from the feather of innocence. What sluggish 
minds have these same Powers ! Do they ever 
honestly say "Why?" to themselves, and try 
to follow it with a genuine "Because?" Do 
they see anything in the yellowing of the com, 
the winter mantle of snow, the glitter of wave- 
lets beneath the sim, more than the operation 
of certain natural processes for the pleasure 
of the eye? Are there to them any voices in 

229 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

the wind, any whispers .*n the falHng water, 
or is it just a sound of half -music to be mildly 
enjoyed and so put away? 

Only when the babes, with all knowledge 
and all experience for their province, begin 
their earnest enquiry into things as they are 
do the Powers guiltily remember that things 
are as they are, and not as inert minds have 
come to regard them, without known cause 
and without recognisable effect. Sadly per- 
haps those ashamed Powers call upon Jupiter 
to bring back the past years when there was 
zest in knowing and joy in absorbing facts. 
"Did you know ..." Guy will begin, 
breathless with some discovery, a strange fact 
imparted by William, a new nest in the ivy, 
an early violet under the south wall, or what 
not. It is melancholy to think that at times 
he might add in just reproach, "And do you 
care?'' But indeed the Powers do try to care 
now. If they didn't they would be found out. 

Poggin has a last word, a word of imexcep- 
tional quality. It comes at the end of Grace 

230 



THE LAST WORD 

after Meat. The limitations of written lan- 
guage will not permit an exact transcription of 
what he says. The proper formula is this: 
"Thank God for my good dinner. Amen. 
May I get down please?" Poggin, with his 
eyes shut tight, says in one breath, quite 
recognisably though with his own inflexions 
and consonants, "Thank God-dinner-down- 
please- Amen." 

Perhaps he will some day be a bishop. 



231 



XIX 

LIFE AND LETTERS 

HAVE you ever, dear Reader, assembled 
your companions, the little skin horse, 
the woolly hound Gelert, the wooden soldier, 
the tin lion, and all the rest of them, and 
straightway gone back to the jungle? The 
jungle lies beyond the iron fence which sepa- 
rates the rectory garden from the glebe. It is 
easily entered. You climb over or crawl 
through the fence, and just lie down flat. 
Already the tall grasses wave above your head 
as a passing gust of wind strokes their feathery 
heads. Already your eyes follow the specks 
of sunlight as they dance wonderfully in the 
cool green glades. The underworld of the hay 
field — if you remember that, you know what 
life is, or may be, a great adventure story that 
lasts from sun up till sim down, that traverses 
vast oceans, climbs high mountains, explores 
II 232 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

trackless forests, and all within a few yards of 
your own fireside. 

Yards, do we say? Why, within a few feet, 
a few inches. What brave doings are there on 
that spreading prairie with its patches of low 
scrub, which people sometimes call the hearth 
rug! Look you now! See to the west yon 
cloud of dust, that forms and reforms, 
broadens and contracts, and ever seems to 
draw nearer? What make you of it, Jake? 
And Jake, that silent but efficient Alter Ego 
of yours, says "Injuns, I calclate." What a 
thrill lies in that word, what a call to the born 
warrior! Rapidly you marshal your forces. 
Seven men only to meet — ^what? Ever bigger 
grows the cloud of dust — they must be thirty 
or forty at the least. Pete must ride to the 
fort as he never rode before, and bring back 
every man they can spare. Meanwhile two 
men to that bluff there, two to the bit of a 
gulley opposite, and we will stay where we are. 
A nmning fight till the supports come up! 
and then — let the redskins have it! Life! 

233 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

Who can lack life while he has a woolly hearth- 
rug, thirty ordinary marbles, and fifteen of 
those white ones with stripes that are a match 
any day for twice their number of dusky foes? 

To enjoy, life properly you must "think 
yourself small." In the hay jimgle, for 
instance, a person the same height as the 
wooden soldier, about four inches, may be 
esteemed well grown. And he may have 
heart-quaking moments as he stalks the lion, 
the great hound with its spiked collar at his 
side. The other ferae naturae, too, become 
vastly important and interesting. The fabled 
scorpion of the eastern sands is scarce more 
formidable than the great earwig which you 
are almost sure to meet pretty soon. The 
fierceness of the tropics seems to be given to 
the many-legged spider or the prowling lady- 
bird, while if you chance to meet the grim 
centipede, the loathly wire-worm, or the terri- 
fying devil's coach horse, why, look to the good 
blade "Snicker Snee." 

Besides the lesser crawling creatures you 
234 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

may chance to meet the great fauna of the 
coimtry. A roaming field mouse is always a 
possibility. No formidable enemy this, for 
all its bulk. It is sleek and gentle as a fallow 
doe. The sabre-toothed rat would be quite 
another story, but luckily does not trouble 
the hayfield much, and is more to be expected 
among the ricks, where you yotuself are 
usually considerably taller and often armed. 
But you may quite well meet a serpent, a 
regular anaconda of a grass snake. And that 
will give you "the creeps" for certain. 
Nothing in Nature is more alien than snakes 
to himian adventtirers, descended as we all are 
from simple Adam and guileless Eve. 

Besides being able to think himself small, 
the amateur of life must also be able to "think 
himself several," or at any rate two. Pene- 
lope, we are sure, can think herself a mother's 
meeting, teacups and all, if occasion demands 
it. Her prattle may be heard echoing in any 
solitude and there is so much of it that it can- 
not be mere duologue. You may be certain 

235 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

that what vaguely troubles your ear is not a 
mere debate between Mrs. Jones and Mrs. 
Brown. Mrs. Robinson is "chipping in," 
Mrs. Smith offers observations, Mrs. Tomp- 
kins passes a few remarks. And as likely as 
not every one of them has a little girl with her 
who also wags an active tongue. Otherwise 
how could Penelope turn solitude into Babel 
as she does? 

Guy also is a multiple personality at will. 
Asked once whether he did not at times find 
prolonged conversations with himself rather 
tedious to himself, he admitted frankly that 
there were occasions on which he would sooner 
have an actual circle of listeners. "But," he 
added thoughtfully, "it's much worse not 
talking at all." And so when he is four inches 
high and going about in his green grocer's 
shop (very neatly stocked with holly berries, 
beans, peas and other miniature fruits in their 
seasons), or building the new house with four 
bricks, two slates, five bits of wood and a 
bucketful of sand, or staying at the seaside 

236 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

beside the little conservatory pond, or working 
on his allotment (which is planted with twigs 
of evergreen, and which really does him great 
credit) — ^whatever Guy does he manages to 
avoid that miserable alternative of doing it in 
silence. And he obviously talks to his other 
selves. 

Occasionally we suspect that those other 
selves are borrowed from that excellent journal 
The Daily Reminder, which plays a very 
prominent part in all our lives. We wonder if 
Cousin Fied (he is, like his creations, thinly 
disguised for manners' sake) appreciates the 
very serious effects his work is having up and 
down the country. You need no introduction, 
of cotirse, to those immortal Beings, Pickle and 
Shriek, who daily place their im varnished 
doings before the public. You know as well 
as we do how morning by morning Cousin 
Fred sadly records their extremely varied 
activities. What you do not know, perhaps, 
is the eagerness with which a host of admirers 
follows the record. 

237 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

"What are Pickle and Shriek doing?" is 
always the first question of the day, and then 
The Daily Reminder is spread out upon the sofa 
and the scissors are fetched. "Read me what 
it puts," is the next observation, when the 
day's portion of real history has been safely cut 
out. Afterwards the drawing is carefully 
pasted into a book which has been diverted 
to this purpose. 

Now The Daily Reminder is an estimable 
sheet enough, but it is emphatically a thing 
for To-day only. We shall not want it To- 
morrow, and as for next Tuesday, it would be 
as out-of-date then as an income tax form for 
the happy year 1913. Therefore when it has 
been studied and has yielded the day's portion 
of mental noiu^ishment it is sent away to per- 
form other works, fire-lighting and so on. We 
hope to see no more of it. But it appears that 
the other works are not sufficient to keep it 
fully employed, and so it has acquired a habit 
of going into a certain cupboard and there 
awaiting the day on which a removal or 

238 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

some great emergency shall call for many 
wrappings. 

One morning, alas, Guy and Penelope found 
the cupboard door open, and very soon after- 
wards The Daily Reminder was strewn every- 
where. You could hardly set foot to carpet 
without treading on some cinema star or 
rather, on her portrait {The Daily Reminder 
is a regular firmament for stars), and the 
careful accumulation of weeks was in half an 
hour completely brought to nought. The 
reason was that one adventure of Pickle 
and Shriek (possibly the one in which they 
make treacle pudding in the new top-hat 
belonging to Cousin Fred's friend, Mr. 
Seventyman) was thought to be missing from 
the albvim. And so the opporttinity of search- 
ing great heaps of Daily Reminders was too 
good to be neglected. Nor were we rid of 
back numbers for days. They met us in all 
our comings and goings, lurked behind easy 
chairs, floated on every breeze. 

But perhaps the most striking testimonial 
239 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

to the influence of the paper and its creations 
was given on the day when some of us went to 
see the new house. We had walked solemnly 
round the garden, had explored the kitchen, 
dining-room, and drawing room, and so found 
ourselves climbing the stairs which lead to 
the upper chambers. And presently a door 
opened and let us into what seemed a very 
home from home. There lay Teddy, and 
Herbert, and Chloe and all the rest of our 
familiar friends, or at any rate their doubles, 
piled in the familiar heap. There were the 
little table and the little chairs, there the nine- 
pins, the bricks, the Japanese fleet — there was 
everything in fact. And there too were two 
shrill stranger voices greeting us as we entered. 
And while one said, "Pickle," the other ejacu- 
lated, "Shriek." It would seem that no 
nursery is now complete without these people. 
Of course the world is wide and it holds many 
other important characters. We meet with 
new ones almost every day. "You never," 
said Guy in a tone of some reproach, "told me 

240 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

about the lady what was turned to a bag of 
salt." The picturesque metamorphosis of 
Lot's wife appealed to him perhaps more than 
to Penelope, who declined to enact the part 
later imless sugar was substituted for salt, 
nasty stuff. There was then some discussion 
as to the orthodoxy of this, but it was finally 
decided that sugar might pass. "You'll be 
turned into a bag just the same, ' ' said Guy. It 
was not, however, the bag that deterred Pene- 
lope. She would just as soon be a bag of sugar 
as not. 

We meet most of these new characters in the 
study of the world's literature, of course, a 
study pursued at secondhand as yet, though 
Guy begins to have an appreciation of certain 
combinations of letters now, and promises to 
stirpass the early efforts of the Other Little 
Girl, who used to interpret Our Darling's First 
Spelling Book by the light of ptu-e reason rather 
than by the rules of language. "T — E — N" 
would spell out the instructress ingratiatingly, 
"what is that?" "Plates," would answer 

91 841 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

the Other Little Girl with her eyes on the 
picture. And, indeed, the picture did display 
plates, ten of them, with nice blue borders. 
The instructress would try again with an- 
other picture. " R—U—N— what's that?" 
"Man" would be the unhesitating reply, 
for the hiirrying figure in brown could belong 
to nothing else. It had a beard. On an- 
other page was a figure called "L — A — 
D" which was too young to be a man. 
Obviously that was "Boy." Other pictures 
in that interesting book displayed such things 
as a chicken which was spelt "H — E — N," 
a mouse which was spelt "R — ^A — T," a horse 
which was spelt "C— O— B." After pro- 
longed debate over each in turn, the instruct- 
ress was understood to be of the opinion that 
while the First Spelling Book might be well 
suited to Our Darlings it was not intended for 
the Other Little Girl. 

Most favoured of all books, perhaps, is that 
wonderful Shock-Headed Peter with its series 
of tragic histories. * ' And so, and so, ' ' Penelope 

242 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

will relate breathlessly, "Mummy and nurse 
went out, and there was matches, and the 
pussies said not to, and Harriet said yes, she 
would, and they crackled so, and mummy did it, 
and the pussies said, 'Miaow,' and she did, and 
she ran about, and the pussies said, 'You will be 
burnt,' and it looked so pretty, and the pussies 
— no that's wrong — and so, and so, she did, 
and it caught her apron string, and her frock 
and her arms and nose, and the pussies said 
'Miaow,' and cried like anyfing, and she was 
burnt, poor little fing, and serve her right." 
The virtuous tone of her conclusion implies 
that under no circumstances would Penelope 
fall into Harriet's error. But she once 
spoilt the effect by observing thought- 
fully, "/ wouldn't let it catch my apron 
string, rd let it catch the pussies' tails 
instead." (Perhaps there is a certain smug 
rectitude about those cats which invites 
retaliation !) 

Moreover it is on record that Penelope has 
in her time fallen into Harriet's error. Guy 

243 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

hurried, glad and excited, into the dining- 
room, saying, "Penny's ht the night -nursery. " 
His observation failed to attract notice 
somehow, owing to other conversation, so he 
reiterated the statement. "She has lit the 
night-nursery. But," he added consolingly, 
"she can't go on because there isn't no more 
matches." And it proved later that there 
was a considerable hole in the night-nursery 
carpet. She was younger then, though. 

Tall Agrippa and the Red-Legged Scissor- 
man are, of course, greatly respected. They 
personify two of the most awe-inspiring con- 
ceptions in the himian economy. Justice and 
Punishment. Agrippa's hat and the Scissor- 
man's twinkling legs add enormously to the 
effect. Penelope's habit of thumb-sucking 
is gradually yielding to that influence. She 
tried to propoimd a theory that the Scissor- 
man, being chivalrous at heart, would not do 
anything to little girls, whatever he might do 
to boys. But she now knows that he has a 
wife named Mrs. Crabtree, who is capable 

244 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

of dealing with any number of little girls, and 
who also has very sharp scissors. 

Experience on the whole, however, shows 
that one book is practically as good as another 
book to engross the mind. There had been 
a nursery tidying, one of the periodical 
movings of mountains which the Powers 
that Be have to undertake and which 
always result in interesting finds. "Yes, and 
do you know,'" said Guy, "we thought we had 
that lovely book. The Flying Pig, and it was 
under all the soft toys and the stamp album 
and the pram cushions, and the lovely Moses 
book was there too." Guy and Penelope 
will listen with equal zest to the adventures 
of the aforesaid flying pig, to the story of 
Moses among the bulrushes (how fortunate 
was that baby to have a little boat all to him- 
self and to be upon the water at an age when 
other infants have to mule in cots ashore!), 
to the fascinating history of Rikki Tikki, or to 
the drama of Red Riding Hood, with its haimt- 
ing rhythmic burden of "A home-made cake, 

245 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

and a little pat of butter." This line, oft- 
repeated, gives Riding Hood's story a char- 
acter of its own, and the strong cake interest 
is probably responsible for a good deal of the 
listeners' enthusiasm. 

It is curious how often the important part 
of a story is some minor detail which crops up 
in it. Johnny Head-in-Air's chief claim to 
notice seems to be that nice red writing book 
which went floating away down the river. 
The student of Johnny's history sees himself 
or herself going off quietly down stream and 
waiting with a long stick till a convenient 
current brings that writing book within reach. 
And lo! a most treasurable new piece of 
property. It is well known (after diligent 
questioning) that Johnny had many not- 
English stamps, several pictures of Pickle and 
Shriek, heaps of drawing paper, and red and 
blue pencils in that writing book. 

Or take Robinson Crusoe and his appeal to 
interest. Is it his lonely state, or his dis- 
covery of the footprint, or the coming of Man 

246 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

Friday, or the battles with the cannibals? 
No, Robinson is a fascinating figure first and 
foremost because he is slung about with mus- 
kets, and swords, and axes, and next because 
he amasses so much property from the ship. 
When we have thrilled properly to the cata- 
logue of Robinson's possessions we can turn 
to his adventures with zeal, but not before. 
Aladdin again, what of him? Aladdin is the 
lucky boy who found heaps of jewels, red 
rubies, green emeralds, golden topazes, blue 
sapphires, ptirple amethysts, and all the rest 
of them, flashing, glowing, gleaming heaps of 
delight. They were all rotmd as marbles, 
and his hands dabbled in them as in softest 
milk. Aladdin filled a bag with these deli- 
cious toys and whenever he felt a bit dull he 
just sat down on the floor and let them roll 
out. Doubtless, Aladdin had other preoccu- 
pations, but there is no need to tell us more 
about him. With that bag he is complete. 

What is true in regard to literature about 
the greater appeal made by the part than by 

247 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

the whole is no less true in regard to life. A 
cowslip may colour a day, a nightingale set a 
night to music. What are the detached 
memories of some of life's happiest hours 
when a London child was given the freedom 
of God's green country? White violets in a 
high-banked lane, a draught of milk from the 
foaming pail, a potato roasted in the bonfire, 
Uncle Joe's Stories absorbed by a reader at 
full length tinder the mulberry tree, the fish 
which gleamed silver in the pond, the baby 
rabbits which huddled in the empty cornbin. 
"Dripping Cakes" for tea — the crisp sweet- 
ness of them lives on though there be never 
such cakes again. Then there was a concert in 
the village schoolroom. The refrains of * * Mis- 
tress Prue" and "Oh that we two were May- 
ing" have rung round the world ever since. 
A song and a duet sung nigh forty years ago 
and still a-singing, despite all the greater 
vibrations since stirred in the air about us 
by the magicians of soimd! 

To see life steadily and whole may be the 
. 248 



LIFE AND LETTERS 

ambition of wisdom, but for happiness it is 
enough that the eyes should note some of the 
changing Hghts, the ears catch some of the 
sweet soimds, even though broken like even- 
ing bells against a sunset breeze. As it is for 
little boys and girls, so may it be for the 
grown men and women. Johnny's writing- 
case and Aladdin's jewels may perhaps lose 
some of their power to thrill, even chocolate 
and dripping cakes may in time seem less im- 
portant than they were. But other things 
will come to take their places and sweeten 
life. To every age belong little joys which 
remain in memory after many of the greater 
experiences have gone over into the mists of 
oblivion. 

So may it be for them. And especially 
may they know what it is to remember a day, 
not because trains were late, tax-collectors 
pressing, fellow citizens exacting or obtuse, 
not because a head ached, or a temper suf- 
fered, not because life seemed a carefully 
arranged assembly of worries — but because 

249 



OURSELVES WHEN YOUNG 

after tea a Poggin held one hand, a Penelope 
held the other, a Guy hurried on before, 
turning an eager face as he began, "Did you 
know . . .," and everybody went forth to 
greet and welcome the new little pig. 



250 



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